WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Republicans on Tuesday insisted they will proceed with a fiscal 2017 budget plan despite a flat-out rejection from their party’s fiscal hawks that poses an important test of Speaker Paul Ryan’s leadership.  The $3.9 trillion proposal, which the House Budget Committee hopes to embrace formally on Wednesday for an eventual floor vote, would provide Ryan with a first step in his political goal of uniting the Republican Party behind a detailed policy plan ahead of November’s presidential and congressional elections. The plan aims to achieve a balanced budget within a decade.  “I promise in this speakership that we’re not going to have a top-down, cram-it-down-people’s-throat kind of leadership,” Ryan told reporters.  “We’re going to make decisions as a team. We’re going to push power out to the members, and we’re going to make a team decision on this issue,” he added.    But the House Freedom Caucus, which includes dozens of outspoken conservatives who dethroned Ryan’s predecessor John Boehner, has been complaining for months about a $1.07 trillion ceiling for discretionary spending that was enacted into law last November. It says the cap should be $30 billion lower and has warned leaders of its opposition.  Several Freedom Caucus members sit on the House budget panel, including Representative Dave Brat, a Virginia Republican who described the group’s position as mainstream: “We’re where the American people want us to be.” Brat said he was leaning toward voting against the proposal in a committee work-session set for Wednesday. Stubborn opposition among Freedom Caucus members, despite weeks of behind-the-scene talks among House Republicans, call into question the ability of party leaders to muster the 218 votes needed to pass the budget without help from the chamber’s 188 Democrats. Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the panel’s top Democrat, slammed the Republican proposal as a plan that would hurt the middle class and harm the Medicare healthcare program for the elderly and disabled. Democratic attacks and fiscal hawk opposition are leading some Republicans to call for a seldom-used “Queen of the Hill” strategy that would allow members to consider different proposals but deem the one with the most votes as having passed the chamber. The budget blueprint is non-binding, meaning it is not subject to President Barack Obama’s approval. But it provides guidance to appropriators as they write bills to fund an array of government programs beginning Oct. 1, the start of the next fiscal year.

Summary: हाउस रिपब्लिकन ने विवादास्पद बजट योजना पेश की


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin had a previously undisclosed conversation during a dinner for G20 leaders at a summit earlier this month in Germany, a White House official said on Tuesday. The two leaders held a formal two-hour bilateral meeting on July 7 in which Trump later said Putin denied allegations that he directed efforts to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Trump’s interactions with the Russian leader were scrutinized closely because of those allegations, which have dominated his first six months in the White House, and Trump’s comments as a presidential candidate praising the former KGB spy. Trump and Putin first met at the G20 during a gathering of other leaders, which was shown in a video. They later held the  bilateral meeting, which was attended briefly by a pool of reporters.  In the evening, both men attended a dinner with G20 leaders. Putin was seated next to U.S. first lady Melania Trump. The U.S. president went over to them at the conclusion of the dinner and visited with Putin, the official said. That conversation had not been previously disclosed. “There was no ‘second meeting’ between President Trump and President Putin, just a brief conversation at the end of a dinner. The insinuation that the White House has tried to ‘hide’ a second meeting is false, malicious and absurd,” the official said. In a tweet late on Tuesday, Trump said: “Fake News story of secret dinner with Putin is “sick.” All G 20 leaders, and spouses, were invited by the Chancellor of Germany. Press knew!” News of the conversation, first reported by Ian Bremmer, the president of political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, could raise renewed concern as Congress and a special counsel investigate allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered to help Trump, a Republican, win the presidency. Trump says there was no collusion and Russia denies interference in the election. Bremmer said Trump got up from his seat halfway through dinner and spent about an hour talking “privately and animatedly” with Putin, “joined only by Putin’s own translator.” The lack of a U.S. translator raised eyebrows among other leaders at the dinner, said Bremmer, who called it a “breach of national security protocol.” The White House official said the leaders and their spouses were only permitted to have one translator attend the dinner. Trump sat next to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s wife. His translator spoke Japanese. “When President Trump spoke to President Putin, the two leaders used the Russian translator, since the American translator did not speak Russian,” the official said. A U.S. official who was briefed by some of his counterparts about the encounter said some of the leaders who attended the dinner were surprised to see Trump leave his seat and engage Putin in an extended private conversation with no one else from the U.S. side present. “No one is sure what their discussion was about, and whether it was purely social or touched on bilateral or international issues,” the official said. As part of the investigations into allegations of Moscow’s meddling, a congressional panel said on Tuesday it wanted to interview Trump’s eldest son, his former campaign chairman and all others who were at a June 2016 meeting with Russian nationals. The meeting in Trump Tower in New York has grabbed the spotlight in the saga of possible collusion between Moscow and Trump’s campaign as media reports of more participants than originally known have emerged.  Donald Trump Jr., who runs the Trump Organization family business, released emails last week in which he eagerly agreed to meet a woman he was told was a Russian government lawyer who might have damaging information about Democratic election rival Hillary Clinton as part of Moscow’s official support for his father’s campaign. “Any intelligence out there that suggests that somebody is of interest to us, we have to pursue it,” the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, Republican Senator Richard Burr, told reporters. Trump Jr.’s lawyer, Alan Futerfas, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday. Jason Maloni, a spokesman for Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager from March to August, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.  On July 10, Trump Jr. posted on Twitter: “Happy to work with the committee to pass on what I know.” MOSCOW-BASED DEVELOPER A man who works for a Moscow-based developer with ties to Trump was identified on Tuesday as the eighth person to attend the Trump Tower meeting. Lawyer Scott Balber confirmed Ike Kaveladze’s name to Reuters after CNN reported that his client had been identified by special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors and was cooperating in their investigation. Balber represented Trump in the New York businessman’s 2013 lawsuit against comedian and television host Bill Maher, demanding the $5 million Maher offered to give to charity if Trump could prove his father was not an orangutan. Kaveladze’s LinkedIn profile identifies him as vice president of Crocus Group, a company run by Moscow-based developers Aras Agalarov and his son, Emin, an Azerbaijani-Russian pop star. The two have ties to the Trump family and helped set up last year’s meeting between Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. Kaveladze was asked to go to the meeting with the understanding he would be a translator for Veselnitskaya, only to find she had brought her own translator with her, Balber told CNN. Balber said he also represented the Agalarovs. Balber said Mueller’s investigators had not interviewed his client or made contact about the Agalarovs. In addition to Trump Jr., lawyer Veselnitskaya, her translator, and Kaveladze, the meeting was attended by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, Manafort, publicist Rob Goldstone and Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin. Separately, the White House said on Tuesday that Trump had nominated Jon Huntsman, a former Utah governor and envoy to China under former Democratic President Barack Obama, as U.S. ambassador to Russia.

Summary: ट्रम्प, पुतिन ने पहले जी20 रात्रिभोज में अज्ञात यात्रा की थी


ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey has not been given crucial data to help identify Islamic State militants who fled their former stronghold in Raqqa last month and may have slipped out of Syria to threaten Turkish or Western targets, Turkish officials said. Hundreds of Islamic State members and their families were allowed to leave Raqqa by Kurdish and Arab forces who captured the city in mid-October, spokesmen for the fighters and the U.S.-led alliance which supports them said. The coalition fighting Islamic State in Syria and Iraq said last month that biometric information including fingerprints was taken from the militants before their convoy left Raqqa, so they would be known  if they resurface in the future . But two senior Turkish security officials told Reuters they had not seen any such data which would identify fighters from Raqqa among the hundreds of Islamic State suspects rounded up in security sweeps in Turkish cities over the last two weeks.  If the United States or the coalition received information about Islamic State members who were withdrawn from Raqqa and is not sharing it with Turkey, how will we fight against terrorism together?  one official said.  We didn t receive any biometric data in this office,  another security official said. A third government official said he believed the biometric data had not been shared with Turkey. Ankara has bitterly criticized the deal to allow militants to leave Raqqa, saying it suspects some fighters have been smuggled across Syria s northern border into Turkey and could pose an international threat.  These Islamic State members, released with their weapons, will cause deaths of innocent people in Europe, the United States, all over the world, especially in Turkey,  Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said last week. His comments reflect long-running tensions with Washington over its support for the Kurdish YPG militia which spearheaded the fight to seize Raqqa from Islamic State, as well as Turkey s complaints at what it says is limited security cooperation. Turkey sees the YPG as an extension of the outlawed Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) which has waged an insurgency in the south of the country since the 1980s, and says weapons supplied by the United States will fall under PKK control. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said last week that the Raqqa deal showed the YPG was more interested in gaining territory for a Kurdish state in Syria than defeating Islamic State. Syrian Kurdish leaders say they are not seeking secession.  They are in close cooperation with Daesh (Islamic State) there,  Cavusoglu said.  These organizations appear to be fighting when it suits them.  The coalition said around 250 fighters, accompanied by 3,000 people it described as human shields, left Raqqa on Oct. 15 under the deal reached by Arab tribal leaders and a local civil council. In a statement to Reuters, it said a coalition leader had attended talks where the deal was reached but was not an active participant, and it  explicitly disagreed with letting armed ISIS (Islamic State) terrorists leave Raqqa .  The coalition said screening of the departing fighters was carried out by Kurdish YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) who took Raqqa, and the Raqqa Civil Council. It referred questions about the biometric data gleaned from the tests to those two bodies. As far as it was aware  none of the terrorists who departed Raqqa with the convoy on Oct. 15, 2017 were able to legally or illegally gain entry to Turkey,  the coalition said, without saying whether it had been able to track them. SDF spokesman Mostafa Bali said all the fighters who were allowed to leave Raqqa were in SDF detention. He did not say whether the biometric data had been shared. But another Turkish official said Ankara suspected - based on interrogations of captured suspects - that some militants from Raqqa had managed to smuggle themselves across the border, despite increased security at crossings.  We believe some of the captured Islamic State militants may be from those that left Raqqa,  he said.  Since they came in with their families, we get this (information) from their families . There was no specific intelligence of a threat to Turkey or Europe at the moment, he added, but an attack could take place at any time.  We have brought measures to counter this to their highest level,  he said. Exchange of information with Europe and the United States was continuing, despite any political differences, he added. France, where militants killed 130 people in coordinated strikes across Paris in November 2015, said last week the threat of an attack was no greater than over the last two years and security services were either arresting or monitoring Islamist militants who returned from Syria and Iraq.

Summary: अधिकारियों का कहना है कि तुर्की ने भगोड़े रक्का लड़ाकों का डेटा नहीं देखा है


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said he had no concerns about the Trump administration’s handling of classified information and added the issue had not come up in his talks on Tuesday with several U.S. allies, saying: “No, I’m not worried.” But at the same time, Mattis deferred to the White House and acknowledged he knew little more about the uproar than what he had “read in the newspaper.” U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have previously said Trump discussed intelligence about Islamic State with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak at last Wednesday’s talks in the Oval Office.

Summary: खुफिया विवाद पर ट्रंप के रक्षा प्रमुख ने कहा, 'मैं चिंतित नहीं हूं'


LONDON (Reuters) - British aid minister Priti Patel will resign rather than be sacked by Prime Minister Theresa May, the BBC s political editor quoted an unnamed source as saying on Wednesday. Patel was meeting May on Wednesday to answer questions over undisclosed meetings with Israeli officials.

Summary: ब्रिटेन के सहायता मंत्री बर्खास्त होने के बजाय इस्तीफा देंगेः बीबीसी ने सूत्र का हवाला दिया


BERLIN (Reuters) - German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel welcomed a ruling by the European Union s highest court which said EU states must accept refugees and asylum seekers, and urged swift action from member states.  I always said to our eastern European partners that it is right to clarify questions legally if there is doubt. But now we can expect all European partners to stick to the ruling and implement the agreements without delay,  Gabriel said in a statement. The court earlier on Wednesday dismissed complaints by Slovakia and Hungary about EU migration policy.

Summary: जर्मनी का कहना है कि यूरोपीय संघ के राज्यों को प्रवासियों पर अदालत के फैसले को तेजी से लागू करना चाहिए


HANOI (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday he was confident a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal he has championed will be approved by U.S. legislators, to the benefit of the world. Obama, on a Visit to Vietnam, told a news conference the TPP was a good deal for U.S. business and it would give the United States the ability to engage on issues of concern. He said he had not seen a credible argument that the deal, which will group 12 economies, would hurt U.S. business.

Summary: ओबामा को विश्वास है कि प्रशांत व्यापार समझौते को मंजूरी मिल जाएगी


HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwean police arrested activist pastor Evan Mawarire of the #ThisFlag movement as he stepped down from his pulpit, accusing him of subversion for a series of social media posts that charged Robert Mugabe s government had wrecked the economy, his lawyer told Reuters on Sunday. Lawyer Harrison Nkomo said Mawarire was arrested and charged with subversion, which carries a maximum term of life imprisonment, for a Facebook video he posted on Saturday lambasting the government over its economic policies. Over the last few days, shortages of basic goods and fuel have emerged, resulting in panic buying by consumers. Prices of imported products are also going up, which businesses blame on shortages of foreign exchange. Mawarire has been at the heart of a protest movement against Mugabe s 37-year rule. In 2016, he led a stay-at-home demonstration that resulted in the first of his now three arrests for what the state says are attempts to overthrow the government. Mawarire was already due to face trial of subversion over the 2016 protests at a High Court trial on Monday.   He is due to appear in court tomorrow on subversion charges emanating from last year. So we really don t know how the state will proceed,  said Nkomo. Press and social media reports, including Mawarire s post, on shortages of basic goods and foreign exchange were meant to cause alarm in the country, said Ignatius Chombo, minister of home affairs, the ministry in charge of the police, said in a statement.  Government is closely monitoring the press and social media reports in question with a view to taking decisive action to deal a telling blow to the perpetrators of the crime in terms of the laws of the country s justice system,  Chombo said. A statement on the website of the United States embassy in Harare published on Friday said it would be monitoring the pastor s trial, and called for  an end to arbitrary arrests and intimidation for political purposes.   Mugabe, 93, has held power since independence from Britain in 1980. He is under mounting pressure from angry Zimbabweans, as well as his war veterans allies, who last year rebuked him as a manipulative dictator and called for him to step down.

Summary: जिम्बाब्वे के कार्यकर्ता पादरी को मुगाबे सरकार की आलोचना करने के लिए गिरफ्तार किया गया


VIENTIANE (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Tuesday he raised the issue of the hacking of Democratic Party emails in a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Lavrov brushed off accusations that Moscow was behind the hacking ahead of the meeting. Kerry also said he would encourage the Philippines to engage in bilateral negotiations with China to resolve their dispute over rival claims in the South China Sea. Kerry is due to travel to the Philippines later on Wednesday, after a two-day visit to Laos, and he will meet President Rodrigo Duterte while there.

Summary: केरी का कहना है कि रूस के लावरोव के साथ डेमोक्रेट ईमेल हैक हुआ


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Republican-controlled congressional panel rejected a bid by Democrats on Tuesday to obtain President Donald Trump’s tax returns, despite warnings that Trump’s business holdings could pose conflicts of interest as Congress turns to tax reform. At a sometimes fiery 2-1/2-hour hearing that careened from lawmaker concerns over political corruption and national security to privacy rights and tax accounting, the House Ways and Means Committee voted 24-16 along party lines to oppose a Democratic resolution that sought the release of 10 years of Trump’s tax returns to the House of Representatives. While the hearing was under way, House Republicans separately turned back a Democratic attempt to force a floor vote on Trump’s tax returns.   Committee Republicans accused Democrats of using the tax-writing committee for political grandstanding. “This resolution is a procedural tool being utilized – and I think, abused – for obvious political purposes,” panel Chairman Kevin Brady said.    Democrats said they were exercising proper congressional oversight and accused Republicans of protecting Trump. Trump has defied decades of precedent by refusing to release his returns, saying his tax affairs are under federal audit. The Internal Revenue Service says audits pose no obstacle to releasing tax returns. “What is he hiding?” asked Democratic Representative Bill Pascrell, who introduced the measure. “It is our responsibility under the Constitution - very clear, very clear - to provide oversight and root out conflicts of interest.”  The rejected measure was part of a Democratic campaign in Congress to force Republicans to confront the issue of Trump’s tax returns in hopes of gradually gaining Republican support for their release.  Some Republicans say Trump should release his tax returns. A Ways and Means Republican joined the list on Tuesday. “I wish he would,” said Representative Pat Meehan, who otherwise argued against the Democratic resolution. Trump’s critics say the documents would help determine whether Trump’s investments and sprawling business empire pose conflicts of interest on policies involving tax, regulation, China, Russia and other issues. “The president now says he wants to lead the effort on tax reform? His tax returns are directly relevant,” said Democratic Representative Sander Levin. Republicans said the details Democrats seek could be found in the financial disclosure statement Trump has filed as president.   It was the third time the tax panel rejected an effort to obtain Trump’s taxes.

Summary: हाउस रिपब्लिकन ने ट्रम्प टैक्स रिटर्न प्राप्त करने के लिए बोलियों को अस्वीकार कर दिया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republicans on Tuesday fell short yet again in their seven-year drive to repeal Obamacare, in a bitter defeat that raises more questions about their ability to enact President Donald Trump’s agenda. The party was unable to win enough support from its own senators for a bill to repeal the 2010 Affordable Care Act and decided not to put it to a vote, several Republicans said. The bill’s sponsors vowed to try again, but face steeper odds after Sunday, when special rules expire that allow them to pass healthcare legislation without Democratic support. “We basically ran out of time,” said Senator Ron Johnson, a co-sponsor of the measure with Senators Bill Cassidy, Lindsey Graham and Dean Heller. Republicans have now repeatedly failed to deliver on their longtime promise to roll back former Democratic President Barack Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment.     They have yet to achieve any major domestic policy successes in Congress this year, which could hurt their efforts to retain control of the Senate and House of Representatives in the November 2018 congressional elections. Republicans widely view Obamacare, which provides coverage to 20 million Americans, as a costly government overreach. Trump vowed frequently during the 2016 election campaign to scrap it. Democrats have fiercely defended it, saying it has extended health insurance to millions.  After falling short in July, Senate Republicans tried again this month with a bill that would have given states greater control over the hundreds of billions of dollars that the federal government spends annually on health care. As before, they ran into objections from members on the right and the center who opposed repeal for essentially opposite reasons. Senator Susan Collins, a moderate, complained it undermined the Medicaid program for the poor and weakened consumer protections. Senator Rand Paul, a conservative, said it left too many of Obamacare’s regulations and spending programs in place. Democrats said it was time for Republicans to work with them to fix Obamacare’s shortcomings, and Republican Senator Lamar Alexander said he would resume talks with Democratic Senator Patty Murray to shore up the law’s insurance subsidies. Shares of healthcare providers ended broadly higher. Hospital company HCA Healthcare Inc rose 1.8 percent, while insurer Centene Corp, which focuses on Medicaid, rose 2.2 percent. The insurance industry, hospitals, medical advocacy groups such as the American Medical Association, American Heart Association and American Cancer Society, the AARP advocacy group for the elderly and consumer activists opposed the latest bill. Trump said on Tuesday his administration was disappointed in “certain so-called Republicans” who did not support the bill. The Republican president said later he still had not given up hope that the law would eventually be repealed. “It’ll happen,” he told reporters while traveling to New York for a fundraiser. Republicans hold a slim 52-48 majority in the Senate and  at least three senators - Collins, Paul and John McCain of Arizona - had publicly rejected the bill. Republicans crafted special rules earlier this year that allowed them to pass a bill with a simple majority in the 100-seat chamber. After those rules expire at the start of the new fiscal year on Sunday, they will need at least 60 votes to advance most legislation.  John Thune, a member of the Republican leadership in the Senate, said the party would likely not try to undo Obamacare again until it was clear there were enough votes for it. He said the party would now focus on overhauling the U.S. tax code - another complex undertaking that could meet with stiff resistance from a wide range of interest groups. A CBS poll on Monday showed 52 percent of Americans disapproved of the Graham-Cassidy healthcare bill, while 20 percent approved.       “I will readily admit that the Republican Party has done a bad job of explaining what we’re for in terms of replace on Obamacare,” Republican Senator Ben Sasse said on the Senate floor. Six protesters staged a “die-in” on the floor of a Senate  office building, lying on the ground and covering their heads and bodies with a white shroud to represent what they said would be lives lost if the bill passed. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said the number of people with health insurance covering high-cost medical events would be slashed by millions if the latest Republican bill had it become law.  The CBO also found that federal spending on Medicaid would be cut by about $1 trillion from 2017 to 2026 and that millions of people would lose their coverage in the program, mainly from a repeal of federal funding for Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.

Summary: सीनेट में ओबामाकेयर को खत्म करने में रिपब्लिकन फिर विफल रहे


ZINANA, Iraq (Reuters) - Four hours after first hearing gunfire outside his home, Abu Riwar bundled his wife and six children into his car and drove to a remote village 120 km (75 miles) away.  We left with the clothes on our back and nothing else,  said Abu Riwar, a member of the Kurdish security forces from the ethnically mixed town of Tuz Khurmato, seized last month by Iraqi troops and Iran-backed Shi ite paramilitaries.  If the militias found out I was Peshmerga, they d have slaughtered me.  They burned his home to the ground instead, his neighbors, who captured it on camera, told him. Tuz Khurmato was part of disputed territory, outside the Kurdish region of northern Iraq but held by Kurdish forces known as Peshmerga, until last month, when the central government recaptured it in a lightning advance to punish the Kurds for staging an independence referendum that Baghdad called illegal. The majority of Tuz Khurmato s 50,000 Kurds   around half of the population of the ethnically mixed city   fled the Iraqi advance to Kurdish-held villages and towns in nearby countryside, said Mayor Shalal Abdul. The mayor himself fled to the village of Zinana, 120 km east of Tuz Khurmato, where he spoke to Reuters. Most residents have no plans to return home, citing reports of continuing attacks.  We can t cope if it continues like this,  said the chief of police in Zinana, adding that the government and aid groups had been too slow to respond.  Families have taken over school buildings, houses and the hospital, but we can t turn them out on the streets.  According to the United Nations, more than 180,000 people were displaced by the Iraqi government offensive on disputed territories last month. Aid agencies say most of those displaced are Kurds, though members of other minorities, including some of Tuz Khurmato s Sunni Arabs and Turkmen, also fled. Until Baghdad s offensive, Tuz Khurmato had been jointly administered by Kurdish forces, local police and the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) paramilitaries, allied with the town s Shi ite Turkmen population.  Though the Turkmen and the Kurds had worked together to push Islamic State militants out in 2014, the town s fragile coalition soon fell apart and led to open hostilities. In the run-up to the Kurdish independence referendum, tension escalated between the communities. In Zinana, displaced Kurds told Reuters stories of abuse at the hands of the Shi ite paramilitaries who captured Tuz. One man showed a video he had filmed depicting the crushed body of a relative. Family members said the victim had been shot in his car, dragged out alive by paramilitaries and run over by a tank.  He was crushed to death in front of me, by those monsters,  said Abu Alan, the relative who filmed the body.  He was a good man from a good family.  A video circulated on the internet, apparently of the same incident, shows a tank running over a body while uniformed paramilitaries stand by. The paramilitaries deny carrying out any abuse.  Joint patrols by the PMF and government forces are securing the town, to prevent any attacks against Kurds,  said Ali al-Hussaini, a spokesman for the PMF in northern Iraq and a commander of the largest of the armed groups, the Badr Organisation.  It s our job to keep Tuz safe for all sects.  The mayor, who is collecting stories and evidence of abuse, said seven people were killed when the town was captured, including the man who was crushed by the tank and three other civilians. He said he also knew of three women and one man who had been raped. Reuters could not verify those accusations. More than 1,000 businesses and 2,000 homes were looted, burned down or demolished, the mayor said.  He showed Reuters images of houses and shopfronts in Kurdish areas, blown up and scorched, their residents  belongings being carted away by men in military fatigues. Other pictures showed paramilitaries sitting in the mayor s own office, feet propped up on his desk and on his Kurdish flag.  Dozens of people were detained, and some say they were tortured, like Thiaa, a 20-year-old Sunni Turkman from the countryside who had gone to Tuz Khurmato the day after the offensive to check on his sister who was married to a Kurd.  They detained me because I don t speak Arabic, so they thought I was a Kurd,  Thiaa said.  They kept me filthy, hungry and blindfolded in a dark room with three Kurds. They beat us with cables all day long.  One night, fighters put a gun in Thiaa s mouth and threatened to kill him, only to burst out laughing at his panicked tears, he said. He was released after seven days and is now recovering at home from his injuries. The Kurds held with him  had no such luck,  he said. More than five are still missing.

Summary: इराक द्वारा विस्थापित कुर्दों को लौटने पर प्रतिशोध का डर है


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Friday after meeting with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto that Mexico is a critical partner to the United States on a host of issues, including security and climate change. “I am proud of what we’ve achieved together,” Obama told the Mexican leader, noting that with the heated rhetoric of the U.S. presidential election campaign, Mexico’s importance to the United States as a major trading partner and neighbor is often not acknowledged.

Summary: मेक्सिको के नेता से मुलाकात के बाद ओबामा ने मेक्सिको को महत्वपूर्ण भागीदार बताया


BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary remains firmly opposed to illegal immigration and the European Union should focus efforts on protecting its external borders, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said about an Estonian compromise proposal on asylum-seekers.  Hungary s view on migration is clear and rock steady: We think illegal immigration is dangerous. Because of illegal immigration, Europe has never had to face the kind of terror threat it faces now,  Szijjarto told a news conference with ministers and officials from eastern and southern Europe, in response to a question. Under the Estonian plan, the executive European Commission would determine  fair shares  of asylum-seekers that countries would be expected to take in at their own borders - largely based on their population and wealth. But it would trigger an  early warning  if arrivals looked about to test such levels. Szijjarto said any  encouragement  for further migrant arrivals was against Europe s interests, adding that the only solution acceptable to Budapest was that illegal immigration should be stopped, preferably as far outside the EU s borders as possible.

Summary: हंगरी ने शरण चाहने वालों पर एस्टोनियाई समझौते के प्रस्ताव को खारिज किया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives passed legislation on Wednesday to block the purchase of “heavy water” from Iran, defying President Barack Obama’s veto threat a year after the announcement of the landmark Iran nuclear agreement. The House passed the “No 2H2O from Iran Act” by 249-176, with support coming almost exclusively from Republicans, who hold a majority of seats in the chamber. Every congressional Republican, and a few of Obama’s fellow Democrats, opposed the nuclear deal between Iran and the United States and other world powers announced last July 14 in which Tehran agreed to curtail its nuclear program in exchange for relief from crippling international sanctions. They argued that Obama was so eager to bolster his foreign policy legacy that he agreed to sanctions relief Iran did not deserve because it lied about its nuclear program, supported militant groups that attack U.S. allies and perpetrated human rights abuses. Deal opponents have repeatedly introduced legislation that the administration sees as efforts to undermine the international agreement. Deal supporters said the agreement was the best way to defuse a dispute over Iran’s nuclear program that threatened further Middle East destabilization. Heavy water is a non-radioactive byproduct from making nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. The Obama administration said in April the United States would buy $8.6 million worth of heavy water from Iran, angering Republicans who called it a subsidy of the country’s nuclear program. The White House issued a threat on Monday to veto the bill, and two others the House is due to consider later this week. Representative Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, denied that the House measure would violate the landmark pact. He said it would deter Iran from producing heavy water by making its sale more difficult. Separately, two Senate Republicans and two Democrats said on Wednesday they would introduce their own Iran-related bill. The measure introduced by Republicans Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Marco Rubio and Democrats Robert Menendez and Joe Manchin would expand sanctions for Iran’s ballistic missile development, sanction transfers of conventional weapons to or from Iran and extend the Iran Sanctions Act. The Iran Sanctions Act, which imposed sanctions over Iran’s missile development and support for terrorism, expires at the end of 2016. Lawmakers have been in discussions for months over the best way to address its renewal.

Summary: सदन ने ईरान से भारी पानी की खरीद पर रोक लगाने के लिए मतदान किया


BEIRUT (Reuters) - A British-Iranian charity worker serving a jail sentence in Tehran received a letter from ex-prime minister David Cameron that showed she had ties to the British government, a prosecutor said on Tuesday, according to Mizan, the news site of the Iranian judiciary. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, a charity organization, is serving a five-year jail sentence after being convicted of plotting to overthrow Iran s clerical establishment. The prosecutor, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, said the letter demonstrated Zaghari-Ratcliffe s importance to the British authorities but he did not say when it was sent or provide any other details about it. A spokeswoman at the British Foreign Office said she was not immediately able to comment on whether Cameron had written a letter, but confirmed that both he and his successor, Theresa May, had raised the Zaghari-Ratcliffe case with Iranian authorities.  We will continue to raise all our dual national detainees, including Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe s case, with the Iranian government at every available opportunity,  she added. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested by the elite Revolutionary Guards in April 2016 at a Tehran airport, as she was about to return to Britain with her two-year-old daughter after a family visit. Her family and the Thomson Reuters Foundation have both denied the charges against her. Thomson Reuters is a charity organization that is independent of Thomson Reuters and operates independently of Reuters News. Last week her family said Iranian authorities had opened a new case against Zaghari-Ratcliffe, leveling charges that could carry a sentence of 16 additional years in prison. The new charges include joining and receiving money from organizations working to overthrow the Islamic Republic, and attending a demonstration outside the Iranian Embassy in London, the family said. The Foreign Office spokeswoman referred Reuters to a statement it issued last week in which it  expressed concern  that Zaghari-Ratcliffe was facing additional charges and said it was seeking more information from the Iranian authorities. On Tuesday Jafari Dolatabadi also said Zaghari-Ratcliffe was responsible for teaching online journalism for the BBC Persian language service  with the goal of attracting and teaching individuals for propaganda operations against Iran , Mizan reported. Francesca Unsworth, director of the BBC World Service Group, said earlier this year that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had never worked for the BBC s Persian service.

Summary: जेल में बंद ब्रिटिश-ईरानी चैरिटी कार्यकर्ता को ब्रिटेन के पूर्व प्रधानमंत्री कैमरन का पत्र मिलाः अभियोजक


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It would be a  game-changer  if North Korea conducts a hydrogen bomb test over the Pacific and the United States is taking the threat seriously, but it does not give  too much credence  to Pyongyang taking such action, a senior U.S. official said on Friday.  There s a certain amount of bluster that s taken for granted when you re dealing with North Korea,  the Trump administration official told Reuters. The official added, however, that  we have to some extent take it seriously.  The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there were questions whether North Korea had the capabilities to conduct such a test but declined to specify how the United States would respond.  It would be a game-changer in some sense,  the official said.  But I don t think we should give too much credence to it at the moment.

Summary: अमेरिका ने उत्तर कोरिया की एच-बम परीक्षण की धमकी को गंभीरता से लिया, ट्रम्प अधिकारी ने कहा


UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia s foreign minister said on Friday the leaders of North Korea and the United States should tone down their bellicose rhetoric and warned that a collapse of a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers would only embolden Pyongyang.  The exchange of threats is quite bad, unacceptable,  Sergei Lavrov told reporters at a news conference.  We have to calm down the hot heads,  Lavrov said, adding that he was convinced a Russian-Chinese proposal could still pave the way for a diplomatic solution to the North Korea crisis. Lavrov added that a collapse of the Iran nuclear deal would give North Korea little incentive to drop its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.

Summary: रूस ने उत्तर कोरिया, अमेरिका को शांत होने के लिए कहा


ISMAILIA, Egypt (Reuters) - Militants attacked a security convoy in Egypt s strife-torn Sinai Peninsula, killing at least 18 policemen in a blast and a gun battle on Monday, sources said - an assault claimed by Islamic State. The attackers detonated an improvised explosive device and managed to destroy three armored vehicles and a signal-jamming vehicle near Arish, the capital of North Sinai province, the security and medical sources said. The attack turned into a gunfight and the militants also opened fire on ambulance workers, injuring four, the sources told Reuters.  At least 18 policemen, two of them officers, died in the violence, and a brigadier general lost a leg in the blast, several sources at Arish hospital said. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted by its news agency Amaq. The Sunni Muslim militants are waging an insurgency in the rugged, thinly populated Sinai, aiming to topple the government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.  Militants have killed hundreds of soldiers and police there since 2013, when the military, led by Sisi, ousted Egypt s Islamist president Mohamed Mursi after mass protests against his rule. At least 23 Egyptian soldiers were killed when suicide car bombs tore through two military checkpoints in North Sinai in July, in one of the bloodiest assaults on security forces in years. The Interior Ministry said several policemen were killed or injured in the attack, without giving figures. The prime minister s office called it a  traitorous incident .  Prime Minister Sherif Ismail affirmed the state s determination to fight these criminal actions that target the safety and will of citizens with its full force,  a government statement said. The United States strongly condemned the attack and said it would  continue to stand with Egypt as it confronts the threat from terrorism,  the State Department said.

Summary: मिस्र के सिनाई में आतंकवादी विस्फोट, बंदूक हमले में 18 पुलिसकर्मी मारे गए


MANILA (Reuters) - More than a week after the Philippines declared victory over pro-Islamic State militants in Marawi, security officials on Friday expressed concern over lone wolf attacks, with Australia issuing a  high threat  alert about travel to Manila. Skirmishes continued between soldiers and holdouts from the Islamist militant group that seized a lakeside town on the southern island of Mindanao. More than 1,100 people, including 165 troops, were killed in the five-month conflict.  One concern after Marawi is the possibility of threats from lone wolves,  defense department spokesman Arsenio Andolong told reporters, two days after an Uzbek plowed into New York pedestrians and bikers in what U.S. officials called a terrorist act. The army remained on high alert after President Rodrigo Duterte said five cities in Mindanao were potential targets of Islamist militants after their defeat in Marawi, he added. On Friday, the Australian embassy issued a travel advisory, warning of  a high threat of terrorist attack  in the Philippines, including Manila, the capital.  Be alert to possible threats around locations that have a low level of protective security and places known to be possible terrorist targets,  it said. It told Australians to reconsider travel plans to eastern Mindanao and avoid its central and western regions. The advisory was similar to one issued early this year, said military spokesman Major-General Restituto Padilla.  It was only a reiteration, there is no credible threat,  he added. Two days ago, army soldiers killed the righthand man of Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon, the emir of pro-Islamic State militants in Southeast Asia, who was gunned down last month. His death hastened the collapse of the Marawi-based militant group, leading to its defeat.

Summary: मारावी की जीत के बाद फिलीपींस ने अकेले भेड़िये के हमलों के खिलाफ चेतावनी दी


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A looming push to overhaul the U.S. tax code could include the repeal of Obamacare taxes left intact by last week’s collapse of the Republican healthcare bill, the Senate’s top Republican on tax policy said on Wednesday.  Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch said levies imposed by Obamacare, including taxes on medical devices and benefit-rich health insurance polices known as “Cadillac” plans, could be tackled through tax reform or a revised healthcare bill. “Either, as far as I’m concerned,” Hatch told reporters.  “Any way we can get rid of those, I think it’d be a good thing.” Americans for Tax Reform, a political group in Washington that opposes all tax increases, said 21 tax hikes emerged from the 2010 Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare. Democrats say the taxes are necessary to help moderate-to-low-income consumers obtain health coverage through private insurance and the Medicaid program for the poor and disabled.  The prospects for using tax reform to repeal Obamacare’s taxes dimmed earlier this week in the House of Representatives, when House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady said he would not include the Obamacare items in tax reform legislation his panel is expected to disclose later this year. Hatch’s comments suggested the Senate could take a different approach on the taxes once a House tax reform bill reaches his chamber, unless a new healthcare bill surfaces first.    The House Republican healthcare bill, which would have repealed nearly $900 billion in Obamacare taxes over a decade, was pulled from consideration last Friday because Republicans lacked the votes to pass it. Republicans say they are determined to revisit the topic, and President Donald Trump told senators on Tuesday that he expected lawmakers to reach a deal on healthcare.

Summary: सीनेट कर प्रमुख ने कर सुधार अभियान में ओबामाकेयर शुल्क को निरस्त करने की गुंजाइश देखी


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With Stephen Bannon, the worry always was that he could be even more disruptive to President Donald Trump’s White House from outside than he was within. In the hours following his firing on Friday, those fears seemed warranted, as the conservative voices who viewed Bannon as one of their own howled in rage over Trump’s decision to fire his chief strategist. The reaction was most notable from Breitbart News, the hard-right news site that Bannon ran before he joined Trump’s presidential campaign last year. “WAR,” tweeted one of the site’s editors, Joel Pollak, who published a piece questioning whether Trump would now move in a more moderate direction with Bannon out of the White House.  “Steve Bannon personified the Trump agenda,” Pollak wrote. Bannon rejoined Breitbart as executive chairman only hours after his firing was announced. He is now expected to use it as a platform to blast those within the White House - and perhaps Trump himself - when they don’t hew to the fiercely nationalist policies Bannon advocated as an inside adviser. As Trump’s chief strategist, Bannon fought numerous battles with senior Trump aides and top Republicans in Congress over the administration’s policy agenda. Breitbart frequently backed him up, ripping establishment Republicans such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan, blaming them for obstructing Trump’s agenda. More recently, the site trained its fire on Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, after he removed officials who espoused Bannon’s foreign-policy world view. In recent days, Bannon had told friends he is worth tens of millions of dollars, is a worldwide leader in the populist-nationalist movement that propelled Trump to power, and could go back to Breitbart, which he refers to as a “killing machine”, or perhaps other endeavors financed by the family of hedge-fund tycoon Robert Mercer, his longtime ally. “Steve has a powerful voice, and he’s going to keep that voice up,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign adviser and Bannon friend. “He’s going to continue to promote policies that got Donald Trump in the White House.” Bannon had clashed with the likes of Gary Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, and Jared Kushner, a Trump adviser and the president’s son-in-law, both of whom favored more business-friendly, mainstream economic policies on trade, taxes, and other matters. While Bannon’s ouster may mean a short-term win for the relative moderates in the West Wing, those he dubbed the “globalists,” it does not mean that policy battles on national security, immigration and the economy will dissipate. Trump has a shown a proclivity for seeking counsel from former advisers such as Corey Lewandowski and Newt Gingrich and from conservative pundits such as Sean Hannity. The outspoken and provocative Bannon could join their number. And there remain other White House officials sympathetic to Bannon’s world view, such as domestic policy adviser Stephen Miller. Even so, Bannon’s absence will be felt. “Trump is always going to be Trump on immigration, trade, and foreign policy. But Steve was the highest-ranking adviser who shared Trump’s world view. With him gone, there’s not a replacement for that voice in internal debates,” one administration official said. “I think people have always overestimated how influential anyone can be on Trump. But without Steve constantly pushing back on every policy idea coming from the so-called ‘globalists,’ it’s easy to see how they could have a chance to start winning more policy battles.” Mike Cernovich, an alt-right activist and personality, suggested to his more than 300,000 followers on Twitter that Bannon was sacked to ensure that the White House raises troop levels in Afghanistan, which Bannon opposed. “This is a full-on coup now, guys,” Cernovich said in a posted video. Beyond Breitbart and the alt-right, some more traditional conservative groups were also concerned about the implications of Bannon’s departure. Twenty Republican grassroots leaders, including longtime activists Richard Viguerie, Jenny Beth Martin, and Ginni Thomas, wrote to Trump earlier in the week urging him to keep Bannon on. “We will miss Steve Bannon in the White House because he helped President Trump keep many of the promises he made on the campaign trail,” Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, said in a statement after Bannon’s ouster. But she also reiterated her support for the president, saying “he is his own man.” If Bannon has anything to do with it, he will push to make sure that Trump stays that way.  But some supporters still worried that the radical agenda  Bannon fought for could be at risk. “It’s a sad day for the movement,” Nunberg said. “I think it will end up being a mistake.” (Corrects spelling of name in paragraph 22 to Viguerie.)

Summary: गोलीबारी के बाद, बैनन अपनी 'हत्या मशीन' पर लौटता है


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for prosecutors to pursue bribery charges against Democratic Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, rejecting his bid to have the case involving donations from a Florida ophthalmologist thrown out. The justices left in place a lower court’s refusal to dismiss a corruption indictment against Mendendez, who had argued that a provision in the U.S. Constitution shielded him from prosecution.  In 2015, a grand jury indicted Menendez on charges of bribery, fraud and with making false statements in his annual financial disclosure forms by failing to list gifts he received from a wealthy friend, Florida ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen.  Prosecutors allege Menendez accepted campaign donations and gifts, including a stay at a Caribbean villa and private jet flights, from Melgen in exchange for interceding in various matters on his friend’s behalf, including an $8.9 million Medicare billing dispute. Menendez and Melgen have pleaded not guilty to the charges they faced in the 22-count indictment. Menendez argued that his actions were protected by the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause, which offers broad protection to members of Congress against prosecution for actions they undertake as legislators. Last July, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled that Menendez’s actions amounted to “essentially lobbying on behalf of a particular party,” and thus outside the “safe harbor” provided in the Constitution.

Summary: सुप्रीम कोर्ट ने भ्रष्टाचार के मामले से बचने के लिए अमेरिकी सीनेटर के प्रयास को खारिज कर दिया


AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A preliminary autopsy indicates that Bosnian Croat war crimes convict Slobodan Praljak died of cyanide poisoning, Dutch prosecutors said on Friday. Praljak said he had taken poison in the courtroom immediately after his conviction and 20-year sentence were upheld on Wednesday, and died shortly afterward. In a statement, prosecutors said a toxicological test found  Praljak had a concentration of potassium cyanide in his blood. This has resulted in a failure of the heart, which is indicated as the suspected cause of death .

Summary: डच अभियोजकों का कहना है कि युद्ध अपराधों के दोषी प्रालजाक ने साइनाइड ले लिया था


NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump and fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives have proposed a healthcare law to kick off their promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. Following are some questions and answers about healthcare spending and health insurance coverage in the United States as Republicans try to throw out President Barack Obama’s signature piece of domestic policy, the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Who is covered by what insurance?     The majority of America’s 323 million people are covered by either government or private insurance. Less than half of U.S. spending on healthcare is publicly financed, a contrast to the 72 percent average among member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. A core goal of Obamacare was to cut into the numbers of uninsured and some 20 million people gained coverage under the law. - 155 million people are covered by employer-based health plans - 70 million people are in the publicly funded Medicaid program for the poor, including 32 million children - 56 million older or disabled people receive Medicare  - 15 million people are covered by military healthcare - 12 million people buy individual insurance on the online shopping exchanges created by Obamacare - 9 million people purchase unsubsidized health insurance directly - 6 million people are covered by the Indian Health Service, student health plans and other sources - About 28 million Americans remain uninsured The figures are government estimates. They do not add up to a total of 323 million because some people have more than one type of coverage.      How much does the country spend?     Spending on healthcare in the United States is about $3.5 trillion a year, representing about 18 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. Current U.S. government estimates are for that spending to outpace economic growth and rise to 20 percent of GDP by 2025. Healthcare spending has been rising faster than inflation. The government estimated it to have risen 4.8 percent in 2016 and that it will increase at an average rate of 5.6 percent through 2025.     What does America get for its money?     While U.S. healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP ranks higher than for any other OECD country, Americans’ life expectancy is near the bottom in a ranking of other OECD countries, behind countries such as France, Germany and Britain. The country’s obesity rate is the highest.      What was the impact of Obamacare?     As the Affordable Care Act was implemented over the past six years, it made sweeping changes to the health insurance system and implemented new taxes, so gutting the law will affect most Americans at some point.     The law set a series of minimum standards. It introduced free preventive care coverage, mandated most employers to offer insurance and individuals to buy it, expanded the Medicaid program to include people with higher incomes and created income-based subsidies for individuals to draw them into buying insurance. It prevented insurers from denying coverage to people based on their health status and allowed young adults to stay on their parents’ health insurance policies.     What sectors are feeling the impact now?     Republicans will tackle repealing Obamacare in multiple steps because while they control both chambers in Congress, they do not have the 60 seats in the 100-seat Senate needed to simply undo the law. The first step focuses on insurance sold to individuals and the Medicaid expansion, which could mean diminished payments to hospitals and doctors who benefited from the 20 million people covered by the ACA. They now face uncertain revenues and the possibility of increased bad debt as they lose paying patients. The impact on insurers is twofold: uncertainty over who will buy insurance could lead to them mispricing insurance plans and suffering financially as soon as this year. In the longer term, the retrenchment is changing the outlook for the growth rate of publicly backed healthcare.     Which publicly traded companies does this affect?     There are only a handful of publicly traded hospital companies, and the biggest one, HCA Holdings Inc, is not focused on states where Medicaid expanded, so it tends not to be involved. Tenet Healthcare Corp and Community Health Systems Inc are smaller hospital chains with high debt loads and their shares do tend to be affected by news about potential cuts to the numbers of Americans with publicly funded healthcare.     The insurers that specialize in Medicaid and government healthcare such as WellCare Health Plans, Molina Healthcare Inc and Centene Corp are small but tend to move on news that the Medicaid expansion may be repealed and on proposed changes in how the federal government pays its share of all Medicaid costs to the states. Anthem Inc is one of the biggest insurers selling plans on the individual exchanges and may see shares affected by news of rules that could affect who enrolls in insurance. Sources - Congressional Budget Office, U.S. Census Bureau, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

Summary: फैक्टबॉक्सः ओबामाकेयर निरस्तीकरण करघों के रूप में अमेरिकी स्वास्थ्य देखभाल खर्च पर एक नज़र


TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - At least one protester died, over 20 people were injured and more than 100 others were arrested for looting in Honduras after a delayed and disputed presidential vote count sparked unrest amid opposition accusations of electoral fraud. Honduras was due to publish the final result of last Sunday s presidential election at 9 p.m. local time (0300 GMT) on Friday, the electoral tribunal said, but opposition complaints about the count appeared set to impede that.  Election results initially favored opposition candidate and TV star Salvador Nasralla by five points with more than half the votes counted. They then swung in favor of U.S.-backed center-right President Juan Orlando Hernandez after the count came to a halt on Monday and resumed over a day later, sparking protests. The tribunal has said it will hand-count some 1,031 outstanding ballot boxes with irregularities - or nearly 6 percent of the total - after the count halted with Hernandez ahead by less than 50,000 votes, or about 1.5 percentage points. However, Nasralla s center-left alliance has called for votes to be recounted in three of Honduras  18 departments, or regions, and refused to recognize the tribunal s special count until its demands for a wider review were met.  If Juan Orlando wins, we re ready to accept that, but we know that wasn t the case, we know that Salvador won and that s why they re refusing the transparency demands,  said Marlon Ochoa, campaign manager of Nasralla s alliance. International concern has grown about the electoral crisis in the poor Central American country, which struggles with violent drug gangs and one of the world s highest murder rates. Police sources said at least one man had been shot and killed at a protest in the city of La Ceiba, while about 12 members of the military and police force had been injured in demonstrations that snarled traffic outside Honduras  main port on Friday and around the country. At least 10 protesters were injured in the capital of Tegucigalpa, according to the city s Hospital Escuela. Military officials called for peaceful protests after police reports of looting in the capital and other cities. In the country s second-biggest city of San Pedro Sula, thick plumes of black smoke clouded the air as protesters burned tires and police tried to disperse the crowds with tear gas. More than 100 people were also arrested on suspicion of looting in San Pedro Sula on Friday, a police spokesman said, and local media carried footage of shops being plundered. People flocked to supermarkets on Friday, stocking up on food and provisions as major roads and supply routes were blocked across the country by angry protesters. Lines appeared outside gas stations and cash machines. Banks clogged up with people wanting to withdraw or deposit money.  I m filling the tank with gas in case anything happens, the situation looks bad and there are protests all over the city,  said Carlos Valle, a 61-year-old pensioner, as he joined a long line of vehicles waiting at a fuel pump in Tegucigalpa. Both Hernandez and Nasralla, a television game show host allied with leftists, claimed victory after the election, and the challenger has said he will not accept the tribunal s result because of doubts over the counting process. Leading a center-left alliance, the 64-year-old Nasralla is one of Honduras  best-known faces and backed by former President Manuel Zelaya, a leftist ousted in a coup in 2009. Zelaya weighed into the debate on Thursday in a letter in which he accused the tribunal of  electoral crimes  on behalf of Hernandez, who himself was standing for re-election enabled by a contentious 2015 Supreme Court ruling. One of the four magistrates on the electoral tribunal on Thursday flagged  serious doubts  about the counting process.  The Organization of American States (OAS) on Wednesday convinced both candidates to vow to respect the final result once disputed votes had been checked. But a few hours later Nasralla rejected the OAS accord, saying his opponents were trying to rob him. He urged supporters to take to the streets in protest.

Summary: होंडुरास में मतों की गिनती में देरी को लेकर अशांति में एक की मौत, कई गिरफ्तार


CHICAGO (Reuters) - Illinois ended its historic budget drought on Thursday after  the House of Representatives enacted the state’s first complete spending plan since 2015 by overriding the governor’s vetoes. But the $36 billion fiscal 2018 budget and $5 billion tax hike may not save Illinois from becoming the first-ever U.S. state with a junk credit rating. The Democratic-controlled House mustered some Republican votes to enact a trio of budget and revenue bills into law over Republican Governor Bruce Rauner’s objection. The House’s action, which was delayed by a nearly two-hour lockdown of the state Capitol in Springfield after a woman threw a white powder into the governor’s office, followed successful Senate veto override votes on Tuesday.  The spending plan for the fiscal year that began on July 1 ends an unprecedented two-year budget impasse between Rauner and Democrats who control the legislature. Rauner pointed to House Speaker Michael Madigan as the architect of the 32 percent permanent increase in the state’s personal income tax rate, which will rise to 4.95 percent from 3.75 percent. “His tax-and-spend plan is not balanced, does not cut enough spending or pay down enough debt, and does not help grow jobs or restore confidence in government,” Rauner said in a statement, adding that Illinois “desperately” needs local property tax relief and term limits for elected officials.  Madigan, who next month will becomes the longest-serving House speaker in U.S. history, said he acted in the state’s interest. “The people in this chamber did not do what was easy today, but we did what was right for the future of our state,” Madigan said after the House completed veto overrides of the budget and tax package, which ranks as one of the brightest legislative victories of his three decades as speaker. After the security scare, when a woman threw a white powder which was later determined to be harmless into the offices of the governor and lieutenant governor and the House gallery, the bipartisan turning back of Rauner’s budgetary vetoes came swiftly. For Rauner it was the most significant and humiliating political blow of his 30 months in office. Representative David Harris, who was among the 10 Republicans who voted to overturn the tax hike veto,  rhetorically asked Rauner from the House floor how he willingly could take the state into the “financial abyss” considering the governor’s long-established business acumen as a former private equity investor. “You are an astute, capable businessman. You understand what the numbers are here,” Harris said. “You understand the implications of junk-bond status. Is that what we want for the fifth-largest state in the union?”  Rauner’s allies made an effort to defend the governor’s position to hold out for non-budgetary priorities like a property-tax freeze and changes in how injured workers are compensated by employers, but it was a lost cause. “I hope that everybody back home and everybody across this state will rise up, let everyone in this chamber know exactly how they feel after this vote is taken,” said Representative John Cabello, a Republican “no” vote. Illinois has been operating for two fiscal years on stop-gap budgets and spending ordered by courts and mandated by Illinois law. Its unpaid bill backlog has ballooned to $15 billion, leaving state universities, social service and health care providers and scores of vendors starving for cash. Moody’s Investors Service, which rates Illinois one notch above junk, placed the state under review on Wednesday for a potential downgrade, saying the budget plan may fall short in addressing the state’s huge unfunded pension liability and the bill backlog.  The new budget aims to initially reduce the bill pile by only about a third, while banking on a projected $1.5 billion in savings from creating a hybrid retirement plan for new hires and other pension measures. Praise for Thursday’s House action flooded in from cash-deprived social-service groups, including the Chicago-based Ounce of Prevention Fund, a group dedicated to fighting childhood poverty whose president is Diana Rauner, the governor’s wife. “We applaud the members of the General Assembly in both parties who took the tough vote to try to end this impasse,” the group said in a statement. With a new budget in hand, the Illinois Lottery will immediately seek leave to resume sales of Mega Millions and Powerball tickets after they were suspended in late June, and a shutdown of billions of dollars in state road projects will end, according to state spokespeople.

Summary: इलिनोइस के सांसदों ने दो साल में पहला बजट लागू करने के लिए वीटो को ओवरराइड किया


DUBAI (Reuters) - A senior UAE diplomat said on Wednesday the Arab world would not be led by Turkey, the Gulf State s first comment on Ankara since a quarrel broke out last week over a retweet by the Emirati foreign minister that President Tayyip Erdogan called an insult. Anwar Gargash, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of the United Arab Emirates, said there was a need for Arab countries to rally around the  Arab axis  of Saudi Arabia and Egypt.  The sectarian and partisan view is not an acceptable alternative, and the Arab world will not be led by Tehran or Ankara,  he wrote on his official Twitter page. Last week, Turkey summoned the charge d affaires at the UAE embassy in Ankara, after UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahayan shared a tweet that accused Turkish troops of looting the holy city of Medina a century ago. Erdogan himself lashed out:  Some impertinent man sinks low and goes as far as accusing our ancestors of thievery ... What spoiled this man? He was spoiled by oil, by the money he has,  the Turkish leader said at an awards ceremony. Turkey s state-run Anadolu newspaper reported on Saturday that Turkey planned to rename the street where the UAE embassy is located in Ankara after Fakhreddin Pasha, the commander of the Ottoman Turkish troops at Medina in 1916. Medina, the holiest site in Islam after Mecca, is now in Saudi Arabia. The UAE sees itself as a bulwark against political forms of Islam, and views Erdogan s Islamist-rooted ruling AK party as a supporter of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, which it opposes.

Summary: झगड़ों के बाद पहली टिप्पणी में, संयुक्त अरब अमीरात के राजनयिक ने कहा कि अरबों का नेतृत्व तुर्की नहीं करेगा


BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Barack Obama’s envoy to Brussels warned Donald Trump against the “lunacy” of backing an EU break-up, saying Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage may have given the incoming U.S. president a false impression that more countries might follow Britain out of the bloc. Anthony Gardner, a banker who has run U.S. relations with the European Union for three years, made the frank comments on Friday in a final news conference a week before Trump has ordered all Obama appointees to quit. Gardner condemned the move as an unprecedented “guillotine exit” that had disrupted public servants’ lives. Referring to Trump’s welcome for the British vote to leave the EU and the apparent influence of Farage in the Trump camp, Gardner said: “For us to be the cheerleaders of Brexit and to be encouraging Brexit Mark 2, Mark 3, is the height of folly.” Gardner said Farage, an EU lawmaker and Trump ally, had written to him recently requesting a meeting. The U.S. envoy said Farage’s views were the “polar opposite” of his own and he thought Farage had misled Trump’s transition team on the state of the EU. Describing calls to EU institutions from Trump’s aides in recent weeks, Gardner said: “That was the one question that was asked - basically, ‘What’s the next country to leave?’. Which is kind of suggesting that the place is about to fall apart.” “It’s just reflective of the general perception, a misperception, a perception that Nigel Farage is presumably disseminating in Washington and it’s a caricature.” He said it would be “fundamentally flawed” for the United States to ignore the EU as “dysfunctional” and instead focus on key allies like Britain and Germany. “We should not depart from 50 years of foreign policy with regard to the EU,” he said. “We should not become the cheerleaders for Brexit, particularly if Brexit appears more likely to be a hard, disorderly unmanaged Brexit.” “A hard Brexit or a fragmentation of the European market would be very bad news for American business,” he added.  “They’ve understood it ... and we need to make the case.” Gardner urged Europeans and the incoming administration not to break ranks on sanctions against Russia over Ukraine - Trump says he wants better relations with Moscow after he takes office next Friday. And he urged U.S. diplomats to speak frankly to the new leadership, even if that carried risks to their careers. He spoke of his “respect” for Britain’s EU ambassador, who resigned this month in a sign of behind-the-scenes arguments in London over Brexit. Ivan Rogers, he said, had “paid the price” for telling political leaders things they did not want to hear. “It’s critically important,” Gardner said, “That while being loyal to the new team ... people speak truth to power.”

Summary: ओबामा के यूरोपीय संघ के दूत ने कहा कि ब्रेक्साइटर फराज ने ट्रम्प को गुमराह किया


NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton leads her Republican rival Donald Trump by 5 percentage points among likely voters, down from a peak this month of 12 points, according to the Reuters/Ipsos daily tracking poll released on Friday.  DON’T MISS: Not enough money for a 'real' coffins in Venezuela Carl Icahn says he didn't sell Herbalife shares  Burkini controversy goes on in France The Aug. 22-25 opinion poll found that 41 percent of likely voters supported Clinton ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election, while 36 percent supported Trump. Some 23 percent would not pick either candidate and answered “refused,” “other” or “wouldn’t vote.”  Clinton, a former secretary of state, has led real estate developer Trump in the poll since Democrats and Republicans ended their national conventions and formally nominated their presidential candidates in July. Her level of support has varied between 41 and 45 percent during that period, and her lead over Trump in the tracking poll peaked this month at 12 percentage points on Tuesday.  During the past week, Clinton has been dogged by accusations by Trump, which she has denied, that donations to her family’s charitable foundation influenced her actions while she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. Questions have also surfaced again about her use of a private email server and address rather than a government one during her period at the State Department.  Meanwhile, Trump and Clinton also sparred over who would be a better advocate for African Americans and other minorities, and Trump hinted he could soften his hard-line stance on immigration.   In a separate Reuters/Ipsos poll that includes candidates from small, alternative parties, Clinton leads the field by a smaller margin. Some 39 percent of likely voters supported Clinton in the four-way poll, compared with 36 percent for Trump, 7 percent for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and 3 percent for Green Party nominee Jill Stein.  Both polls were conducted online in English in all 50 states. They included 1,154 likely voters and have a credibility interval of 3 percentage points.  The results may differ from the Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation project, which includes a separate weekly tracking poll that measures support for the major party candidates in every state and Washington D.C.  The States of the Nation, released on Wednesday, estimated that if the election were held now Clinton would have a 95 percent chance of winning by a margin of about 108 votes in the Electoral College, the body that decides the election through a count of the candidates’ wins in each state.

Summary: रॉयटर्स/इप्सोस पोल में क्लिंटन ट्रम्प से 5 अंकों से आगे हैं।


BOZEMAN, Mont. (Reuters) - Republican Greg Gianforte defeated a political novice to win Montana’s seat in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday, barely 24 hours after he was charged with assaulting a reporter who asked him about the Republican healthcare bill. A race that was expected to be a test of President Donald Trump’s political influence ahead of next year’s U.S. congressional elections was jolted by the charge against Gianforte, a wealthy technology executive who had urged voters to send him to Congress to help Trump. Speaking to cheering supporters in Bozeman after his win, Gianforte apologized for the incident and said he was not proud of his actions. “I should not have responded the way I did, and for that I’m sorry,” Gianforte said. “I should not have treated that reporter that way.” Gianforte beat Democrat Rob Quist, a banjo player and first-time candidate who had focused his campaign on criticism of the Republican effort to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama’s healthcare law. CNN projected Gianforte would win. With 96 percent of the vote counted, he led Quist by 51 percent to 43 percent. Gianforte prevailed despite being charged on Wednesday night with misdemeanor assault on Ben Jacobs, a political correspondent for the U.S. edition of the Guardian newspaper, who said the candidate “body-slammed” him during a campaign event in Bozeman. Gianforte’s victory is a boost for Republicans, who are worried Trump’s political stumbles and the unpopularity of the healthcare bill passed by the House will hurt their chances of holding on to a 24-seat House majority in next year’s elections. But the relatively close margin of the race in Republican-leaning Montana was encouraging to Democrats, who are already focused on next month’s hotly contested special House election in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia. Gianforte had been favored to win in Montana, where Republicans have held the lone House seat for two decades and where Trump won by more than 20 percentage points in the 2016 presidential election. The race had grown closer in the last week, however, as Quist focused on criticism of the House healthcare bill.  Quist, wearing his signature cowboy hat, told supporters in Missoula, Montana, that the grassroots energy of his campaign would continue. “I know that Montanans will hold Mr Gianforte accountable,” Quist said. It was unclear if Gianforte’s assault had an impact on the vote. More than a third of the state’s registered voters had already submitted ballots before it happened, state election officials said, and some Gianforte supporters shrugged off the charges or said they did not believe published accounts. “I feel like, it’s all just propaganda, you know what I mean, it’s hard for me to believe anything the media tells me,” said Nathaniel Trumper, who cast a vote for Gianforte at a polling station in Helena. The assault occurred as Jacobs tried to ask Gianforte about healthcare, according to an audio tape. Fox News Channel reporter Alicia Acuna, who was preparing to interview Gianforte, said the candidate “grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him to the ground.” Afterward, three state newspapers rescinded their endorsements of Gianforte. Some Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, suggested he apologize. Gianforte specifically addressed his apology to Jacobs. “Last night I made a mistake,” he said, adding: “I’m sorry, Mr Ben Jacobs.” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel called Gianforte’s apology “a good first step toward redemption” and said she hoped he “continues to work toward righting his wrong.” Gianforte will take the House seat vacated when Trump named Ryan Zinke as secretary of the interior. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence recorded robocalls to voters on Gianforte’s behalf, and Republican groups poured millions into ads criticizing Quist for property tax liens and unpaid debts, which Quist said stemmed from a botched gallbladder surgery. Quist, who raised more than $6 million for his upstart bid, said the experience gave him insight into the economic struggles some people face. He campaigned last weekend with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who won the state’s 2016 Democratic presidential primary against Hillary Clinton. Gianforte could face additional, more serious charges once prosecutors review the evidence, Gallatin County Attorney Marty Lambert told Reuters. Gianforte has two weeks to enter a plea to the misdemeanor citation issued by the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office, according to Lambert, who said he would likely review the case before then to decide whether it should be treated as a felony offense, which would supersede the current charge. “There’s always the possibility that when we get the case and the details, that we might look differently at the charging decision,” Lambert said.

Summary: हमले के आरोप के बावजूद रिपब्लिकन ने मोंटाना विशेष चुनाव जीता


PARIS (Reuters) - France criticized Russia on Thursday for calling into question an international inquiry into who is to blame for chemical weapons attacks in Syria. Russia has questioned the work and future of the joint inquiry by the U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), and said it would decide whether to support extending the mandate after investigators submit their next report.  We cannot accept that the credibility and independence of these mechanisms are challenged on the grounds that their conclusions are not suitable for Russia,  French foreign ministry spokeswoman Agnes Romatet-Espagne told reporters.  This undermines the international consensus that it is our responsibility to build to stop the use of these weapons in Syria.  The inquiry, known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM), is due to report by Oct. 26 on who was responsible for an April 4 attack on the opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhoun that killed dozens of people. France, Britain and the United States have accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad s government of being behind the attack and the probe is expected to back those claims. The United States said on Wednesday it would push the United Nations Security Council to renew within days the JIM s mandate, setting the stage for a likely showdown with Russia, which backs Assad and denies Assad has used chemical weapons. France, under President Emmanuel Macron, has been pushing for closer cooperation with Moscow, especially over Syria, and has said dialogue with Russia on enforcing a 2013 Security Council resolution to prevent the use of chemical weapons in Syria was one of its priorities.  The JIM (already) concluded in its August and October 2016 reports the responsibility of the Syrian armed and security forces in three cases of chlorine use and Islamic State in one case. The methodology of the investigation is indisputable,  Romatet-Espagne said.

Summary: फ्रांस ने सीरिया में जहरीली गैस की जांच पर रूस के रुख की आलोचना की


NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenyan police used tear gas to disperse opposition protesters on Monday in the capital Nairobi and another city as demonstrations against a presidential vote re-run continued despite a government ban.  Kenya s supreme court nullified the presidential election result in August, citing procedural irregularities and voiding the victory of President Uhuru Kenyatta. The ruling opened the way to a repeat vote on Oct. 26. But opposition leader Raila Odinga has refused to take part, saying the re-run should not happen until major reforms are introduced to prevent another failed vote. The election board has said the polls will go ahead anyway, pitting Kenyatta against six other candidates, none of whom polled more than 1 percent in August.  The standoff has spooked investors in the region s most advanced economy and is slowing growth. Last month, Kenya lowered its 2017 economic growth forecast to 5.5 percent due to drought and political uncertainty.  On Sunday, Odinga repeated his call for more protests, which authorities banned in the central business districts of Nairobi, the coastal city of Mombasa and the opposition stronghold of Kisumu in western Kenya. The events in Kenya have raised confusion among voters and fears that politically-driven violence might escalate.  At a political rally on Monday, Kenyatta accused the opposition of seeking to wreak chaos and force a coalition  government, allegations the opposition has denied. At least 33 people died in Nairobi during a police crackdown on opposition supporters after the August election, including a child and a pregnant woman, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said on Monday. The national police disputed the report, saying it was  totally misleading and based on falsehoods.

Summary: केन्या के दो शहरों में विरोध प्रदर्शनों को रोकने के लिए पुलिस ने आंसू गैस के गोले दागे


MADRID (Reuters) - The board of Spanish infrastructure firm Abertis will meet on Monday to discuss moving its head office out of Catalonia as the region s parliament considers unilaterally declaring independence from Spain, a source familiar with the matter said. Several big Catalan companies have announced plans to move their registered office to other cities in Spain after Catalonia went ahead with an independence referendum last week which was banned by a Spanish court. There was no immediate comment from Abertis, which builds, maintains and operates highways in Spain, France and the Americas. Italy s Atlantia bid 16.3 billion euros ($19 billion) for Abertis in May to create the world s biggest toll road operator. ($1 = 0.8523 euros)

Summary: स्पेन का एबर्टिस बोर्ड सोमवार को कैटेलोनिया से मुख्य कार्यालय स्थानांतरित करने पर चर्चा करेगाः सूत्र


BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised her veteran finance minister at a party in his honor on Monday, as a potential coalition partner laid claim to his job as their price for supporting her in power. Speaking at Wolfgang Schaeuble s 75th birthday celebration, Merkel paid tribute to his 45 years as a member of parliament, but gave no clear signal that she wanted to retain him in the post after a national election on Sunday that she is on track to win.  We re fighting together at the moment to ensure there are at least four more years,  Merkel told attendees at the event hosted by her Christian Democrats (CDU) in Offenburg, in his constituency in the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg. In a wheelchair since a deranged man shot him at an election campaign event a few days after German reunification in 1990, Schaeuble lives for his job and has made abundantly clear he would relish another run as finance minister. But his fate may rest in the hands of the parties Merkel ends up governing with. On Monday, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), regarded as a natural ally of her conservatives, made a play for his ministry in exchange for joining the next coalition.  The FDP should enter no government in which it cannot name a finance minister,  Alexander Hahn, a member of the party s national executive, told mass-market daily Bild. The FDP is still haunted by its decision not to take the finance ministry in 2009 at the start of Merkel s second term - a move that backfired as Schaeuble quashed the FDP s plans for tax cuts, alienating its pro-business supporters who then booted it out of parliament in 2013. The FDP has reinvented itself with a hard line on Europe and its leader has voiced concerns that Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron plan to strengthen the euro zone by creating a system of financial transfers between states. Schaeuble, who is the face of German austerity and has insisted that EU countries adhere to Europe s budget rules, could help Merkel keep conservative voters and lawmakers on board as they press ahead with deeper euro zone integration. Horst Seehofer, leader of Merkel s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), said he favoured a tie-up with the FDP.  I quite clearly hope for a black-yellow coalition,  he told the Handelsblatt daily referring to the parties  colors. The FDP is currently polling well above the 5 percent threshold it will have to cross to re-enter parliament on Sunday, but surveys suggest it and Merkel s conservatives will probably need a third partner to secure a majority. The chancellor may yet find herself resuming the current grand coalition with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), whose leader Martin Schulz accused her of personally blocking measures proposed by his party to improve the situation of families with small and medium incomes. During a town hall-style ARD television interview, he said Merkel would start to roll back social policy reforms after the election if she was able to form a conservatives/FDP coalition.  They want to abolish the law to limit rent increases. And then the property market will go through the roof,  he said.     The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is expected to enter parliament for the first time, meanwhile beefed up its anti-immigration rhetoric.  Germany has become a safe haven for criminals and terrorists from all over the world because thanks to a lack of border checks it s easy to get in,  top AfD candidate Alice Weidel said in Berlin. Merkel, who was dressed in the conservatives  black and the FDP s yellow, paid tribute to Schaeuble as a European, a fighter for German unity, a passionate parliamentarian and an intellectual force who kept calm in hectic situations. But she also wished him time to spend with his family and try out new things, as she presented him with the complete works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and theologian known for his opposition to the Nazis.  We wish you a good read, new insights, all the best and, in the name of the CDU and from me personally, dear Wolfgang Schaeuble, many heartfelt thanks,  Merkel said.

Summary: शेयबल के जन्मदिन की पार्टी में मर्केल वित्त मंत्रालय पर चुप रहीं


NEW YORK (Reuters) - Rhetoric against free trade from both likely U.S. presidential nominees poses a risk to the economy and consumers who would lose out if international trade is restrained, the chief executive of the largest U.S. railroad said on Thursday. “Global trade is not getting a fair shake in the dialogue,” Union Pacific Corp (UNP.N) CEO Lance Fritz said during a discussion with Reuters journalists. “We’ve devolved to a form of populism in the rhetoric and that strikes me as having a lot of negative consequences.” Free trade agreements and their impact on U.S. workers have been a major theme in the 2016 campaign for the presidential election on Nov. 8. Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has criticized the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and promised to rip up the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, has criticized the partnership deal, which was signed in February but has not yet won congressional approval.  Omaha, Nebraska-based Union Pacific has a growing business serving cross-border trade with Mexico, and over the past decade has reported increased shipments of containers full of consumer goods, many of which come from Asia. Fritz said both candidates are arguing that NAFTA is “a bad thing,” even though Trump has been more vocal than Clinton in warning about losing jobs to foreign competition and threatening to slap tariffs on imported goods. “That’s concerning to me,” Fritz said. “That’s telling the U.S. public that free trade is a bad idea, and that’s patently not in the interest of the U.S. consumer.” “We are worried and thinking about what-ifs,” Fritz said when asked how his company would deal with a Trump or Clinton administration. “What I’m hoping is we get a little more clarity as we get closer (to the election) and it starts making sense and we can plan around it.” Fritz, who has served as Union Pacific CEO since February 2015, also noted that despite low fuel prices, U.S. consumers still have not taken up the slack in the broader economy. “We haven’t seen a strong consumer in a little while,” he said. Fritz said he did not know when the railroad would meet its target of an operating ratio, a measure of efficiency, of 55 percent. The ratio expresses operating expenses as a percentage of revenue, so the lower the figure the better.  “We’re going to get there as soon as we can in a reasonable fashion,” he said. Union Pacific posted a first-quarter operating ratio of 65.1 percent. U.S. railroads generally have a significantly higher operating ratio than the 58.9 percent reported in the first quarter by Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd (CP.TO) and Canadian National Railway Co (CNR.TO). Fritz also said Union Pacific would have an anti-collision system mandated by Congress in place by the deadline of 2018. But the company would need the two one-year extensions allowed to “debug” the Positive Train Control (PTC) system, he added. Last year, Congress extended the deadline for the system’s implementation beyond 2015, despite opposition from some lawmakers following a fatal Amtrak crash in Pennsylvania in May 2015.

Summary: अमेरिकी चुनाव का व्यापार विरोधी लहज़ा 'चिंताजनक': यूनियन पैसिफिक के सी. ई. ओ.


(Reuters) - Three appeals court judges appointed by Democratic former President Bill Clinton will review a Hawaii judge’s order blocking President Donald Trump’s revised restrictions on travel from six Muslim majority countries. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel will hear the case on May 15 in Seattle. Judges Michael Daly Hawkins, Ronald Gould and Richard Paez have been assigned to the three judge panel, according to the court’s web site.

Summary: डेमोक्रेट नियुक्त अपील न्यायाधीश ट्रम्प यात्रा आदेश की समीक्षा करेंगे


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations will blast the world body over its treatment of Israel at her Senate confirmation hearing, according to prepared testimony seen by Reuters on Tuesday. “Nowhere has the UN’s failure been more consistent and more outrageous than in its bias against our close ally Israel,” Republican South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley said in the opening remarks for her appearance on Wednesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Any honest assessment also finds an institution that is often at odds with American national interests and American taxpayers,” the speech says. In the remarks, Haley offered some praise for UN activities, such as health and food programs that have saved millions of lives, weapons monitoring and some peacekeeping missions, in something of a departure from Trump, who has disparaged the United Nations. Other Trump national security nominees, notably his choices for Secretary of State, former Exxon Mobil Corp chairman Rex Tillerson, and Secretary of Defense, retired Marine General James Mattis, have also broken from the Republican president-elect in testimony before the Senate. Noting that the United States contributes 22 percent of the UN budget, far more than any other country, Haley asked, “Are we getting what we pay for?” She promised to work with U.S. lawmakers to pursue what she described as “seriously needed change” at the United Nations. Some Republican lawmakers, led by South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, have threatened to cut U.S. funding for the United Nations after the Security Council adopted a Dec. 23 resolution demanding an end to settlement building by Israel. Graham will introduce Haley at her hearing.

Summary: इज़राइल पर विश्व निकाय को विस्फोट करने के लिए ट्रम्प के संयुक्त राष्ट्र के उम्मीदवारः गवाही


(Reuters) - Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence said on Sunday that evidence implicated Russia in recent email hacks tied to the Nov. 8 U.S. election, contradicting his running mate, Donald Trump, who has cast doubt on Russia’s involvement. Pence’s comments came after U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview that aired on Sunday that the United States would be sending a message to Russia “at the time of our choosing” about the email attacks. Obama administration officials initially refused to say if they thought Russia was behind the attacks, before accusing Moscow for the first time earlier this month. President Barack Obama said in an interview with NBC News that “anything’s possible” when asked if Russia hacked into the Democratic National Committee. “What we do know is the Russians hack our systems, not just government systems, but private systems,” Obama said. “But what the motives were in terms of the leaks and all that, I can’t say directly, but what I do know is that Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin.” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, speaking about the hack of the DNC emails, said the U.S. intelligence community was not ready to “make the call on attribution” as to who was responsible. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson offered state officials help from hacking threats or other possible election tampering, in the face of unsubstantiated allegations by Trump that the system is open to fraud. Speaking at a conference in Washington, Clapper said that “the Russians hack our systems all the time,” but he did not officially blame them for the intrusions into Democratic Party organizations. During a live interview with the Washington Post, Clapper said Russia had a tradition of trying to interfere in elections in other countries. He added that his biggest concern was not that a foreign power would try to affect the outcome of the U.S. election but instead “cast doubt on the whole process.” The U.S. government for the first time formally accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations.  “We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the Obama administration said in a statement. Biden said in an interview with NBC News that the United States would send a “proportional” response to Russia for the hacking “at the time of our choosing and under the circumstances that have the greatest impact.”

Summary: अमेरिकी अधिकारियों ने ईमेल हैक्स के लिए रूस के लिंक पर बयानबाजी तेज की