HAVANA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. cruise operators and airlines stand to lose around $712 million in annual revenues if the Trump administration fully reinstates restrictions on travel to Cuba, Washington lobby group Engage Cuba said in a report released on Thursday. U.S.-operated cruises and scheduled flights to the Caribbean island were relaunched last year after a half-century hiatus, as part of the detente with Cuba pursued by former President Barack Obama. That may be under threat as U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration nears completion of a policy review to determine how far it would reverse that engagement. “Rolling back expanded travel will cost airlines $512 million annually ... based on the average ticket fare,” Engage Cuba wrote in the report to which a host of Cuba experts contributed. U.S. airlines flying to Cuba include Jetblue, American, Delta and Alaska. Cruise operators, from Carnival to Norwegian [NCLH.O], stand to lose $200 million in revenue per year, Engage Cuba estimated, noting that thousands of jobs in both sectors were at risk. The estimate was based on lost revenue from fully booked flights and cruises. Eliminating cruises to Cuba could also cost South Florida’s economy an additional $212.8 million, given what passengers spend in port communities, Cuba Engage said. Supporters of the U.S.-Cuban detente are stepping up their lobbying to influence the Trump administration review. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators last week reintroduced legislation to repeal all restrictions on travel to Cuba, this time attracting far more co-sponsors. U.S. tourism to Cuba is still not allowed, but Obama’s decision to ease travel restrictions fueled a boom in American visitors under categories like educational travel. The number of U.S. visitors rose 74 percent last year.

Summary: अगर ट्रम्प ने क्यूबा की नजरबंदी को उलट दिया तो अमेरिकी यात्रा क्षेत्र को नुकसान होगाः रिपोर्ट


BEIJING (Reuters) - Not enough effort is being put into teaching China s ethnic minorities standardized Mandarin Chinese during Beijing s fight to eradicate poverty, a top advisor to the government said on Saturday. Chinese president Xi Jinping has declared war on poverty, and instructed local governments to eliminate impoverishment to create a  moderately well-off society  by the beginning of 2021, in time for centenary of the ruling Communist Party. While regional authorities have dolled out supportive policies, funds and programs in China s poorest regions, they are failing to teach ethnicities enough Mandarin, Zhu Weiqun, said in an article in the state-backed Global Times newspaper. Efforts to teach minority peoples Mandarin are  not up to scratch  in various places, said Zhu, who is head of the minorities and religions committee of the Chinese People s Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body.  I regularly come across low level cadres who with great effort use a mouthful of dialect to talk about their poverty alleviation plans without realizing that dealing with their own deficiencies in speaking Mandarin is an urgent task,  he said. China promotes the use of standardized Mandarin, based on the dialect of Beijing, and encourages ethnic minorities to learn the official language in a bid to improve unity in multi-ethnic areas of the country. But there has been resistance to the push for standardization in regions such as Tibet and Xinjiang, where Tibetans and Uighurs, a Turkic speaking mostly Muslim minority, often consider language integral to their cultural identity. Beijing denies that Mandarin promotion damages minority culture, arguing that learning the official language gives minorities greater opportunities for work and schooling. Zhu said in the article that communication issues with workers from Xinjiang could cause a  vicious cycle  when companies group the workers together hindering their ability to work with others. Over 70 percent of the population speaks Mandarin, but there levels of fluency in west China are 20 percent lower than in the east, with only 40 percent of people able to speak Mandarin in some rural areas, Zhu said.  Using standardized Mandarin to alleviate poverty, using poverty alleviation to promote standardized Mandarin, does not only have an economic importance, but also has a deep political importance,  he said.

Summary: चीनी सरकार के सलाहकार का कहना है कि गरीबी से लड़ने के लिए अधिक मंदारिन की आवश्यकता है


NEW YORK (Reuters) - It has proven one of Donald Trump’s greatest strengths in building a worldwide luxury brand: An obsessive attention to detail, down to the curtains hanging in hotel rooms and the marble lining the lobby floor. As president, it may prove one of his major liabilities, presidential historians warn. Interviews with a dozen people familiar with how Trump conducts business reveal the president-elect as a micromanager who regularly spars over details about decor in projects across his real estate and branding empire.  “I’m very much involved in the details,” Trump said during a June deposition in a lawsuit stemming from his development of a Washington hotel. “I was involved in the design of the building and the room sizes and the entrances and the lobby and the marble and the bathrooms and the fixtures and the bars and a lot of things.” Trump announced on Wednesday that he would leave his businesses “in total” so that he could focus on the presidency. But those who have worked with him say a lifetime habit of micromanaging may be difficult to break, providing ammunition for critics who say his decisions as president will be driven by his private interests. A former employee of the Trump Organization who has worked closely with Trump was skeptical that he could leave behind his beloved company after spending decades building it up. “I can’t picture him stepping aside for the presidency,” the ex-employee said. Even if he does make a clean break, Trump will have to guard against getting bogged down in the bureaucratic minutiae inherent in the office. He should avoid the example of President Jimmy Carter, another famous micromanager, who spent his first months in office poring over the White House tennis court schedule, said Ross Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University. Micromanagers rarely make successful presidents, said Rick Ghere, an associate professor of political science at the University of Dayton in Ohio. To be effective, presidents must delegate authority to members of their cabinet and rely on a range of expertise, he said. “Being a decisionmaker in a high-level public position is a lot different than being a CEO,” Ghere said. Trump has said he will turn the Trump Organization over to his three adult children, who are already deeply involved in real estate projects around the world.  His daughter Ivanka, for instance, was charged with overseeing the renovation of Washington’s Old Post Office Pavilion, a $200 million project to turn the historic building into a luxury hotel. In cases where Trump has delegated authority, he still demonstrates a deep reluctance to let go, even when it comes to seemingly trivial details.  Two people who participated in an inspection of the Washington hotel with Trump shortly before he announced his candidacy in June 2015 remember the businessman growing incensed over a detail: The restoration of exterior windows.  Trump said the windows looked terrible, though one of the sources recounting the story said there didn’t seem to be anything obviously wrong with them. He demanded the contractor not be paid but was told the work had been done for free in the hopes of getting more business from the Trumps, according to the source.  That source and two others on the project also recalled hearing Ivanka say she needed her father’s approval before signing off on some decisions she wanted to make on the project. The sources said it was not uncommon for her to say she would “run this by my father” or “check with New York.”  Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said Trump is “incredibly detail oriented as any great developer is, something he shares with his adult children including Ivanka.” Trump’s reluctance to step aside from his company was apparent in a New York Times interview last week in which he said, “in theory I could run my business perfectly, and then run the country perfectly.” Trump’s reputation as a micromanager dates back to some of his earliest building projects. In her 2013 book ‘All Alone on the 68th Floor’, Barbara Res, who oversaw construction of Trump Tower in Manhattan, described her boss in 1983 agonizing over the height and thickness of decorative trees in the building’s atrium. Three decades later, Trump would bring his management style to the presidential campaign trail. Three sources who worked on the campaign said Trump made almost all the decisions on spending, strategy, and messaging. According to the sources, senior campaign officials were desperate to get aboard the candidate’s plane early on in the presidential race, fearful if they were left behind he would change course on strategy and they would be shut out.  When Paul Manafort, who was helping run Trump’s campaign, secured the candidate’s authorization to spend $20 million hiring field operatives, he was triumphant, according to a Republican National Committee member, recounting an RNC meeting with Manafort in April.  The committee member though was perplexed - why had Manafort needed Trump’s approval for an expenditure on such an essential part of his campaign, and why was the amount so small? At that point in an election year, past candidates had already begun spending upwards of $80 million on the same thing. Manafort told Reuters that while it was true most candidates simply signed off on a budget rather than reviewing each expenditure, Trump was different because he was partly funding his campaign. “I understood it and totally agreed with that approach,” Manafort said. Later in the campaign, Trump was still agonizing over details. In October, he insisted on reviewing the script of a radio ad that was to be broadcast on stations with predominantly black audiences, according to a source inside the campaign.  Micromanaging is not necessarily a recipe for disaster - presidents like Abraham Lincoln, Carter and Barack Obama gained reputations as micromanagers, said Nancy Koehn, a professor at Harvard Business School who studies the history of leadership in the United States. But Koehn said a micromanager with a lack of any government experience was a potentially toxic combination.  “I think it is highly likely that diving into areas in which he has very little experience without an extraordinary cast of experts around him will result in poor policy decisions which will have large unintended consequences,” she said. Only two of Trump’s nominees so far have U.S. federal executive branch experience, although the lineup does include a state governor, several U.S. lawmakers, and a former Goldman Sachs executive.

Summary: अलगाव की चिंताः ट्रम्प की प्रबंधन शैली ओवल ऑफिस में चुनौतियों का सामना कर रही है


MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent a telegram to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, hailing the breaking of the siege of Deir al-Zor by Syrian government troops, the Kremlin said on Tuesday. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters that Putin had hailed the breakthrough as  a strategic victory  over Islamic State militants.   Street-to-street fighting was now underway in Deir al-Zor, Peskov said.    Russian air strikes that struck Islamic State targets in the city on Tuesday helped Syrian government troops in the area swiftly advance, he said, citing a Russian Defence Ministry report to Putin.

Summary: पुतिन, सीरिया के असद को तार में, 'रणनीतिक' देइर अल-ज़ोर की जीत की सराहना करते हैं


BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Thursday pledged stiffer oversight of preschool teachers, including closer checks on their qualifications, following an outcry over allegations of child abuse at a private kindergarten in Beijing.  The case has become a lighting rod for anger at a lack of trained teachers, low wages and poor oversight in China s massive and fast-growing private pre-school sector. Claims that teachers at a school in the capital run by New York-listed RYB Education had abused children sparked an outpouring of anger online last week. On Tuesday, police in Beijing dismissed as unfounded some of the claims, such as one that children were given tablets or another that doctors had undressed them for medical checkups.  The education ministry will do more to check the qualifications of new entrants to teaching and will adopt tougher oversight measures, deputy minister Tian Xuejun said, in reply to a question from Reuters about the scandal. Most teachers are cautious and conscientious workers who provide a happy environment for children, he said, adding,  But there have also been a few individual incidents like this that we do not wish to see.  Tian attributed such events to Chinese parents  unmet demand  for pre-school education of high quality.  We believe one side of incidents like this at kindergartens reflects a contradiction between the masses  rigid desire for pre-schools and the inadequate and unbalanced development of education,  he said.  Tian s view echoed President Xi Jinping s declaration, at a top meeting of the ruling Communist Party in October, that the core issue facing Chinese society is unequal and imbalanced development that fails to meet people s desire for a nice life. RYB appears to have weathered the storm, seeing its shares recover some of their initial losses after the scandal broke, thanks in part to active and effective crisis management by the company s founder, experts said. Teachers and academics have said that stamping out abuse remains a challenge in China, especially at franchised, private-sector schools where competition for entry is fierce and norms for teachers are less stringent.

Summary: चीन ने किंडरगार्टन दुर्व्यवहार घोटाले के बाद शिक्षकों पर और अधिक जांच का वादा किया


CLEVELAND (Reuters) - Lawmakers in Ohio on Wednesday approved legislation that would legalize marijuana use for medical purposes under certain circumstances, less than a year after recreational marijuana use was soundly defeated by Ohio voters.   The bill, approved by both chambers of the state’s Republican-led legislature, heads to Republican Governor John Kasich for his signature as his office said on Wednesday that he will review the bill. During the last few years, state legislatures and voters in the United States have been much more receptive to making the use of marijuana legal for medical purposes than for recreational use.  Some 24 states and Washington D.C. currently allow some type of medical marijuana use while only a handful of states allow for recreational use. It remains illegal on the federal level.  The Ohio legislation is more limiting than some in that it only allows patients with specific medical conditions to use an oil, edible, tincture or vapor form of marijuana prescribed by a physician licensed in the state, starting in 2017.  “This bill is not perfect, but it’s what Ohio patients need,” Ohio Senator Kenny Yuko, a Democrat, said before his house approved the bill.  “Marijuana is not a gateway drug, but a gateway off drugs.” Medical marijuana users would not be allowed to smoke or grow their own marijuana under the measure, which also would  create a commission responsible for regulating and licensing of all operations of the drug. In November, Ohio voters soundly rejected a measure that would have made it the first U.S. Midwestern state to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. Lawmakers from both parties voted for and against the bill on Wednesday. Some opponents of the measure have said that the qualifying list of medical conditions is too limited.  The measure was fast-tracked to head off a possible less-restrictive medical marijuana ballot initiative in November.  In a poll released in early May, 90 percent of Ohio voters supported the legalization for medical marijuana.

Summary: ओहायो विधायिका ने सीमित चिकित्सा मारिजुआना उपयोग की अनुमति देने के लिए मतदान किया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Crowds packed U.S. bars on Thursday to watch former FBI chief James Comey testify to Congress, with some patrons dismissing the hearing as hype and others cheering his comments as they downed mixed drinks with names like “impeachmint” and “bad hombre.” From Capitol Hill to San Francisco’s Castro district, television “watch parties” beckoned politics buffs to taverns, restaurants and living rooms to view an event some likened to the “Super Bowl of Washington.” The drama around Comey’s first public appearance since he was fired by President Donald Trump last month drew the kind of communal public interest more often associated with major sporting events and awards shows. Every seat was taken at the Union Pub in Washington, located in the shadow of the building where Comey testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee for about three hours from 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT). Comey accused Trump of dismissing him to try to undercut the bureau’s investigation into possible collusion between his 2016 presidential campaign team and Russia’s alleged efforts to influence the election. The pub had promised to buy patrons a round of drinks every time Trump, a prolific Twitter user, tweeted during Comey’s testimony - but drinkers were out of luck. The president did not launch a single public retort during the hearing, although his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., sent several tweets attacking Comey.  “(Comey) did in no uncertain terms call Trump a dishonest person,” said Jared Sorhaindo, 30, who works as a researcher. “That was one of the things that I thought would make Trump fly off the handle.” Mark Johnson, 69, self-employed from Rockville, Maryland, was one of the few Republicans in the packed bar and defended the Republican president. “It is kind of selective outrage on the part of Democrats, and I don’t think that what Trump did rises to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors,” Johnson said, referring to one of the standards that can trigger congressional impeachment proceedings against a president. At Houston’s Axelrad Beer Garden, a crowd of 200 people applauded when Comey called Trump’s rationale for firing him “lies, plain and simple.” Texas leans Republican but Houston, the largest city in the state, voted overwhelmingly for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in November. “So far, no smoking gun,” said Cesar Robles, 35, watching the hearing at the bar. “Not much is going to be done” as a result of the testimony, he said. Back at the Union Pub in the nation’s capital, Joseph Cortese, a 22-year-old intern working for a Republican congressman, said the hearing was overblown and would not affect Trump or his agenda. Some Democrats have suggested Trump could be impeached and removed from office if he was found to have sought to hinder the Russia probe in a way that obstructed justice. That is seen as very unlikely given Republicans control both chambers of Congress. “I think the media and liberals are going to have to move on and accept the fact that Donald Trump is going to be president for the next four years,” Cortese said.

Summary: कुछ लोगों ने कोमी की गवाही का स्वाद चखा, अन्य लोगों ने अमेरिकी बार 'वॉच पार्टीज' में कंधा हिलाया


LONDON (Reuters) - British police and spy agencies have not found evidence that last week s attack on a London commuter train was ordered or organized by a recognized militant group, according to U.S. and British government sources familiar with the investigation. Counter-terrorism officers have arrested two men after a crude homemade bomb sent flames shooting through a packed carriage at west London s Parsons Green underground station during the Friday morning rush hour, injuring 30 people although it apparently failed to detonate fully.  Following the attack, Amaq, the news agency of the Islamic State militant group, claimed responsibility for the bombing.  On Monday, five U.S. and British government sources said it was possible that the attack was somehow  inspired  by Islamic State via its extensive array of internet-based propaganda and instruction materials. But they said no evidence had emerged of any direct connection between the attack and IS, or any other organized militant group or faction.   It doesn t sound to me like a centrally directed plot,  one official said. British police are questioning an 18-year-old man arrested in the departure lounge of the port of Dover on Saturday and another suspect, 21, detained hours later in the west London suburb of Hounslow. Officers are also conducting a major search of a property in Sunbury-on-Thames, a town just outside London and about four miles (six km) from Hounslow. Local media said the home belongs to a couple who have fostered hundreds of children, including refugees. The leader of the local authority was quoted as saying the 18-year-old was an Iraqi who had come to Britain as an orphan aged 15. The 21-year-old is a Syrian national who had lived in Britain for a number of years, according to the media reports. British police have declined to confirm the identities of those being questioned, which is common practice.  Interior minister Amber Rudd said on Sunday the two arrests suggested it was not a  lone-wolf  attack but there was no evidence IS was involved. Friday s bombing was the fifth major attack regarded by authorities as a terrorist incident in Britain this year. Islamic State militants have claimed credit for other previous attacks, including two in London and one at a concert by American singer Ariana Grande in Manchester.  British officials have said there is scant evidence the group orchestrated those attacks, but those responsible might have been radicalized by IS online propaganda.

Summary: लंदन हमले को सीधे आतंकवादी समूहों से जोड़ने का कोई सबूत नहीं हैः अमेरिकी सूत्र


CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt s air force killed a large number of militants responsible for a deadly attack on a police convoy 10 days ago, the military said on Tuesday following an air raid on their base. The raid, the second in a week targeting militants behind the Oct. 21 attack, was coordinated with police and based on intelligence about the location of their hideout, a military statement said. Three security sources said at the time that at least 52 police officers and conscripts were killed on Oct. 21 when their patrol came under attack, but the interior ministry refuted that figure the next day and said only 16 policemen had been killed. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi appointed a new military chief of staff a week after the militants struck and the Interior Ministry dismissed several high-ranking officials. Tuesday s military statement said the air strike was a  continuation of the armed forces and police efforts to avenge the martyrs of national duty . A  large number of terrorist elements  died in the strike, and the air force and police were pursuing several militants on the run, the statement added. Three vehicles loaded with large quantities of weapons, ammunition and explosives were also destroyed in the strike, and the military later posted footage of the attack. An official source in the Giza province security directorate told Reuters more than 12 militants had been killed, though a military spokesman did not confirm any death toll. The military spokesman later said in a statement that a police officer who had been kidnapped during the Oct. 21 attack had been rescued and taken to a military hospital. Egypt has been fighting an Islamic State insurgency concentrated in the northern part of the Sinai peninsula since Sisi led the military overthrow of President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013. Hundreds of members of the security forces have been killed since. No group has claimed responsibility for the Oct. 21 attack in a remote desert area of Giza, about 130 km (80 miles) southwest of Cairo. The latest air strike was the second attack on militants in five days - at least 13 militants died in a raid on a farm hideout in the region on Friday.  The vast Western Desert has long been a security headache, with arms flowing across the border with Libya, where militant groups have found shelter since the country fell into chaos after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

Summary: मिस्र ने पश्चिमी रेगिस्तान हमले के लिए बम आतंकवादियों को जिम्मेदार ठहराया


KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Kim Jong Nam, the murdered half-brother of North Korea s leader, had a dozen vials of antidote for lethal nerve agent VX in his sling bag on the day he was poisoned, a Malaysian court was told  this week. Two women, Indonesian Siti Aisyah and Doan Thi Huong, a Vietnamese, are charged with conspiring with four North Korean fugitives in the murder, making use of banned chemical weapon VX at the Kuala Lumpur international airport on Feb. 13. The vials contained atropine, an antidote for poisons such as VX and insecticides, toxicologist Dr K. Sharmilah told the court on Wednesday, state news agency Bernama said. However, she did not know if the vials were marked in Korean, she said when cross-examined by Siti Aisyah s lawyer, Gooi Soon Seng.   Kim Jong Nam, who was living in exile in Macau, had criticized his family s dynastic rule of North Korea and his brother had issued a standing order for his execution, some South Korean lawmakers have said. Malaysia was forced to return Kim Jong Nam s body and allow the suspects hiding in the embassy to return home, in exchange for the release of nine Malaysians barred from leaving Pyongyang. On Thursday, a police witness told the court Huong had the opportunity to dispose of a T-shirt and short skirt she had worn during the alleged attack. The T-shirt, bearing the word  LOL , and the skirt could have easily been found in a pile of clothes in the hotel room where Huong stayed, the witness, Nasrol Sain Hamzah, an assistant superintendent, told Huong s lawyer, Hisyam Teh Poh Teik.  Earlier, Nasrol told the court that he needed Huong to point out the clothes which had been concealed when the police raided. Defence lawyers say Siti Aisyah and Huong, arrested in Kuala Lumpur within days of the killing, were duped into thinking they were playing a prank for a reality TV show and did not know they were poisoning Kim Jong Nam. North Korea has denied accusations by South Korean and U.S. officials that Kim Jong Un s regime was behind the killing. The court hearings, which have run more than a month, are to resume on Jan. 22.

Summary: मलेशियाई अदालत ने बताया कि किम जोंग नाम के थैले में तंत्रिका एजेंट की दवा थी


ZAGREB (Reuters) - Croatian police arrested eight former senior executives of Agrokor[AGROK.UL] in a series of raids on Monday as part of an investigation into alleged financial irregularities at the heavily indebted food producer and retail conglomerate.  The state prosecutor s office DORH said in a statement the investigation targeted 15 individuals  suspected of economic crimes and fraud . Local media reported that some 300 police officers were engaged in the operation. DORH did not issue any official statement after the arrests but local media said those detained would be taken to DORH premises for questioning on Tuesday. Among those arrested were Ivan Crnjac, Agrokor s former deputy finance and strategy president, and Ljerka Puljic, the ex-supervisory board member and top aide of founder Ivica Todoric, as well as the board member Tomislav Lucic, the state news agency HINA said. The police also detained Agrokor s former management members Piruska Canjuga and Damir Kustrak, former vice-president Mislav Galic and another two executives, Marijan Alagu i  and Alojzije Pand i . Todoric s lawyer, Jadranka Slokovic, said that his residence was also raided but she could not provide any more details. She said the arrests of Agrokor s former executives was  the start of a  political showdown with Todoric,  HINA reported. But Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic dismissed such allegations, saying:  There is no political persecution.   It is in our utmost interest to fully disentangle this issue. It is important to establish its causes and consequences and how to proceed further,  Plenkovic added. Agrokor, the biggest employer in the Balkans with around 60,000 staff, was put into state-run administration in April  after suffering a liquidity and debt crisis. Todoric said in a blog post on Monday he was not currently available but was willing to put himself at the disposal of the judiciary and a parliamentary commission. He denied any wrongdoing by himself or his associates. Croatian lawmakers approved the appointment of a parliamentary commission to investigate how Agrokor ran into trouble, after crisis manager Ante Ramljak said he had pressed for criminal charges against those responsible for financial irregularities. [L8N1MH1ZY]  An audit ordered by the company s state-appointed management and performed by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), also showed a net loss in 2015 of 3.6 billion kuna ($565 million) against a net profit of 1.2 billion kuna released by the previous management. In the audit the value of Agrokor s net worth for 2015 and 2016 was reduced by 22 billion kuna.   Agrokor has yet to say how much it owes. Creditors include suppliers, bondholders and banks, with the biggest portion of debt, around 1.1 billion euros ($1.30 billion), held by Russia s Sberbank, creditors have said.

Summary: क्रोएशियाई पुलिस ने एग्रोकोर में आठ पूर्व अधिकारियों को हिरासत में लिया


MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines said on Tuesday it has withdrawn an application for a second grant from a U.S. aid agency after getting $434 million in 2010 aimed at reducing poverty, but that the move had nothing to do with Western criticism of its human rights record. Projects financed by the aid agency, the Millennium Challenge Corp (MCC), require counterpart funding from the Philippines, but presidential spokesman Harry Roque said the government wanted to channel resources instead into rebuilding Marawi, a southern city devastated in fighting between the military and Islamist insurgents this year.  It was deemed that for the time being, we will withdraw our application for the second cycle and we will focus instead on the rebuilding of Marawi,  Roque said. The issue of aid has been contentious in the Philippines, with President Rodrigo Duterte objecting to donors attaching conditions, and especially to any expressions of concern about human rights. Nearly 4,000 people have been killed by police since June last year. Police reject allegations they are executing drug users and dealers and say killings were all in self-defence. Several thousand other people have been killed in mysterious circumstances, with the police usually attributing those deaths to gang violence. In August, the MCC upheld the eligibility of the Philippines to secure a fresh grant, after initially deferring a vote amid concern about Duterte s war on drugs. The Southeast Asian country  graft-fighting efforts are also in the spotlight after it fell short of the  control of corruption  target on the MCC s scorecard. But Roque was quick to point out that the decision to withdraw the application for another MCC grant had nothing to do with such issues. He said the government would  probably  apply for another MCC grant in future. This year, his government rejected about 250 million euros ($295 million) in European Union grants. Officials of the MCC were not available for comment. The U.S. embassy in Manila, without mentioning the Philippines  withdrawal of its grant application, said the MCC was pleased with its achievements in the Philippines.  Both the MCC and the United States are proud of our longstanding, positive relationship  with the Philippines, said embassy press attache Molly Koscina.

Summary: फिलीपींस ने अमेरिकी अनुदान के लिए बोली वापस ली, कहा अधिकारों से असंबंधित


MADRID/BARCELONA (Reuters) - Spain s central government said on Thursday it would suspend Catalonia s autonomy and impose direct rule after the region s leader threatened to go ahead with a formal declaration of independence if Madrid refused to hold talks. In an act unprecedented since Spain returned to democracy in the late 1970s, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said he would hold a special cabinet meeting on Saturday that could trigger the move. The Socialist opposition said it backed the government but suggested the measures should be limited in scope and time. Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, ignoring a 10 a.m. deadline to drop his secession campaign, wrote a letter to Rajoy threatening a formal declaration of independence. The war of words increased uncertainty over a standoff that has raised fears of social unrest, cut growth prospects for the euro zone s fourth-largest economy and rattled the euro.  If the government continues to impede dialogue and continues with the repression, the Catalan parliament could proceed, if it is considered opportune, to vote on a formal declaration of independence,  Puigdemont said. Catalonia, which has a distinctive culture and language, triggered Spain s biggest political crisis for decades with a secession bid it put to a referendum on Oct 1. Only 43 percent of voters participated but those who did voted overwhelmingly to secede, while opponents of secession mostly stayed home. Spanish courts have ruled the referendum illegal, but Puigdemont says the result is binding and must be obeyed. The European Union declined to help mediate, saying the crisis was for Madrid and Barcelona to resolve.  Member states are clear there is no room or space for any kind of mediation,  European Council President Donald Tusk told a news conference during an EU leaders summit in Brussels. The regional authorities have not made clear how and when a declaration of independence would take place and whether it would be endorsed by the regional assembly. Some pro-independence lawmakers have said they want to hold a vote in the Catalan parliament to lend it a more solemn character. Rajoy plans to invoke Article 155 of the 1978 constitution, which allows taking control of a region if it breaks the law. A senior government source said the exact measures would be agreed on Saturday and probably voted through the upper house Senate on Oct. 30, giving the secessionists a few days of leeway to respond before Madrid takes control. The regional authorities could use that time to split unilaterally, call elections in the hope of strengthening their mandate, or back down, although this is seen as highly unlikely.  From the moment the measures are known, the regional government knows what s going to happen and has a period of time to act until 155 can be acted upon,  the source said. Spanish stocks, bonds and the euro all suffered in early trade, but recovered, a bounce some strategists attributed to a sense that Madrid had the upper hand in the standoff.  The terms of Article 155 are vague and could spur more wrangling with the restive region.  The government will use all the tools available to restore as soon as possible the law and the constitutional order, recover peaceful cohabitation between citizens and stop the economic damage that the legal uncertainty is creating,   government spokesman Inigo Mendez de Vigo said in a statement. Rajoy s team met members of the socialist party to coordinate their next steps. A spokesman for the Socialists said while they fully stood behind the government they would insist Article 155 is applied in the most proportionate way. Madrid s options range from closing down the regional parliament and expelling lawmakers, to a softer and more targeted approach, the government source said. Theoretically, the central administration could take control of the region s finances and police, and call a snap election. But some members of the Catalan government have already questioned this interpretation of the constitution, suggesting the stand-off could extend for at least several more days. Carles Riera, a lawmaker from the pro-independence CUP party whose 10 deputies are vital to Puigdemont s coalition, said dialogue with the Spanish state now looked impossible, and called on the leader to formalize a declaration of independence.  From our point of view, the sooner this happens the better,  Riera told Reuters in the Catalan capital Barcelona. Impatience is also setting in among residents of the port city. Merche, 55, who voted for secession in the referendum, said she was tired of the political to-and-fro.  People want a resolution. Go for one thing or the other, but leave people in peace to carry on with their routine and their work,  she said, rearranging lettuces on her market stall.  Puigdemont has already defied Rajoy once this week, when he ignored a first deadline to drop the independence campaign and instead called for talks. Rajoy says the Catalan government has repeatedly broken the law, including when it held the banned referendum and when it made a symbolic declaration of independence on Oct. 10, only to suspend it seconds later.  Puigdemont says a violent police crackdown during the referendum and arrests of pro-independence leaders on charges of sedition show the Spanish state has become authoritarian.

Summary: स्पेन ने स्वतंत्रता के खतरे के जवाब में कैटेलोनिया की स्वायत्तता को निलंबित कर दिया


BEIJING (Reuters) - The recent scene at a dusty Inner Mongolia military base provided evidence of Chinese President Xi Jinping s consolidation of political power, even as he faces pushback from some quarters in his ruling Communist Party ahead of a critical gathering next month. Dressed in army fatigues, Xi reviewed a military parade on July 30 marking the 90th founding anniversary of the People s Liberation Army (PLA). Breaking with precedent at such events, Xi   who is head of the party and the military as well as president - did not share the stage with peers or party elders. PLA General Fan Changlong, in a further departure from the norm, hailed Xi as  lingxiu , or leader, a reverent honorific bestowed only on two others since the 1949 founding of the People s Republic of China: Chairman Mao Zedong and his short-lived successor, Hua Guofeng. According to six sources with ties to the leadership, as well as Chinese analysts and foreign diplomats, that display and others sent a clear signal of his increasingly dominant position in the runup to the Party s congress starting on Oct. 18, a meeting that is only held once every five years. Rana Mitter, director of the University of Oxford China Centre, said the  lingxiu  title would suggest Xi had succeeded in one of his key aims to  centralize as much authority and charisma under his own person  as possible. But as Xi s supporters promote his agenda, some party insiders, wary that he will accumulate too much power and effectively end three decades of collective leadership, have delayed agreement on who will end up on the party s Standing Committee, the apex of power, currently made up of seven men.  There is opposition to Xi getting too much power,  said a source with ties to the leadership. The State Council Information Office, which doubles as the party s spokesman s office, did not respond to a request for comment for this story. As is typical in the run-up to the Congress, competing name lists have been circulating in leadership circles for the Standing Committee, but sources caution they are possibilities rather than the final line-up.  There is an anti-Xi faction forming up,  said a Beijing-based diplomatic source, citing meetings he has had with Chinese officials.  It remains to be seen if he ll get it all his own way for the Standing Committee.  Key questions include whether Xi ally and top corruption buster Wang Qishan will stay on past traditional retirement age and, whether Xi will get his supporters in all the key positions. There will also be a lot of attention on any moves that would enable Xi to stay on in some top leadership capacity after his second term ends in 2022. Xi is required by the country s constitution to step down as president after two five-year terms. There is no limit on his tenure as the party and military chief, though a maximum 10-year term is the norm. Distinct from the standard usage of  lingdao  for leader,  lingxiu  evokes grander, almost spiritual, connotations.  The party is gearing up to put Xi on the same level as Mao,  another  Beijing-based diplomatic source said, referring to the significance of the  lingxiu  term.  The Central Party School, which is the top training ground for up-and-coming cadres and is influential in interpreting and disseminating party directives, has since the military parade used  lingxiu  in official party language to refer to Xi.  The Study Times, the school s official newspaper, referred  to Xi as  lingxiu  for the first time on Aug. 21.   This is the choice made by history, made by the people,  it said. The military s official PLA Daily also referred to Xi as  lingxiu  on Aug. 25. However, the People s Daily, the party s official newspaper, has yet to call Xi  lingxiu .  If Xi becomes  lingxiu  at the congress, it would be tantamount to being party chairman,  another source with leadership ties said.  Xi is currently the party s general secretary, but not chairman. China s first three leaders after the founding of the People s Republic in 1949 all carried the title party chairman -Mao, Hua and then Hu Yaobang. It has not been used since.  It would be a life-long tenure,  the source said, adding that adopting such a title would be easier than amending the party charter to resurrect the chairmanship, which was abolished in the early 1980s to prevent another Mao-like personality cult. Xi added  core  to his slew of titles last October.  If he were to be formally anointed  lingxiu  during the congress, his political clout would eclipse that of the past few presidents, the sources said. It would effectively grant him veto power on any major decision put to the Standing Committee, they said. For decades, the Communist Party general secretary has been technically first among equals in the Standing Committee under a collective leadership model designed to avoid one-man rule. While western analysts largely view Xi s centralization of authority as having a possibly narrowing effect on China s potential for further radical economic reform, three sources with leadership ties said Xi wants a strong hand precisely to force through changes that are resisted by vested interests.  This kind of title is essential,  a source with ties to the leadership told Reuters.  China at this juncture needs this kind of powerful man in control.

Summary: चीनी पार्टी की कांग्रेस के आने के साथ ही परेड में शी की ताकत


BEIJING (Reuters) - China supports Cambodia s efforts to protect political stability and believes it will smoothly hold elections next year, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Cambodian counterpart, after the country s main opposition party was dissolved. The Supreme Court banned the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) last week at the request of Prime Minister Hun Sen s government in a move that prompted the United States to cut election funding and threaten more punitive steps. The European Union has also threatened action. The CNRP was banned after its leader, Kem Sokha, was arrested for alleged treason. The government says he sought to take power with American help. He rejects that allegation as politically motivated, to allow Hun Sen to extend his more than three decades in power in next year s general election. The United States has said that Cambodia s 2018 election  will not be legitimate, free or fair . Meeting on Monday on the sides of a Asia-Europe foreign ministers meeting in Myanmar, Wang told his Cambodian counterpart Prak Sokhon that China supported the government s actions.  China supports the Cambodian side s efforts to protect political stability and achieve economic development, and believes the Cambodian government can lead the people to deal with domestic and foreign challenges, and will smoothly hold elections next year, , China s Foreign Ministry said in a Tuesday statement. China has repeatedly expressed its support for Cambodia, making no criticism of the government led by Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander, who is one of Beijing s most important allies in Southeast Asia after more than three decades in power.

Summary: चीन ने राजनीतिक विरोध पर कंबोडिया की कार्रवाई का समर्थन किया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI will recommend to the Justice Department that no charges be filed over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state, agency Director James Comey said on Tuesday, lifting a cloud of uncertainty looming over her White House campaign. The agency found evidence of “extremely careless” handling of emails by Clinton, and that at least 110 emails contained classified information at the time they were sent, said Comey, announcing the result of a yearlong investigation. But the FBI concluded that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring charges against Clinton, he said. “Although the Department of Justice makes final decisions on matters like this, we are expressing to Justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this case,” Comey told reporters in Washington. His recommendation will likely stand. The country’s top prosecutor, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, said on Friday she will accept the recommendations of career prosecutors and the FBI director on whether to charge Clinton for mishandling emails.  The FBI probe has dogged the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s campaign for the past year and has contributed to her low poll ratings on honesty and trustworthiness. Republicans pointed to the controversy as evidence that Clinton considered herself above the law. Donald Trump, Clinton’s Republican rival for the Nov. 8 election, has hammered her on the issue, saying the investigation should disqualify Clinton from being president. On Tuesday, he said the FBI decision was unfair. “The system is rigged,” he said on Twitter. “As usual, bad judgment.” The FBI has been investigating whether Clinton broke the law as result of a personal email server kept in her Chappaqua, New York, home while she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. One of the questions is whether she mishandled classified information on the server. Clinton has repeatedly said she never sent or received classified information on her private server. She had a  voluntary 3-1/2-hour interview with the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Saturday in Washington. Comey said, however, there was “evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information.”  But he said the FBI did not find that Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate the law, and there was no “intentional misconduct” by her lawyers who sorted her emails. He said her staff should have known the server was in an improper place for her emails. Comey also said there was no evidence that anyone had hacked Clinton’s communications, although it was possible. Republican lawmakers have called for an independent investigation, saying they do not trust the Justice Department to handle the inquiry with impartiality. Republican criticism increased after Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, met privately with Lynch last week. Lynch later said she regretted the meeting and the two did not discuss the investigation.

Summary: एफ. बी. आई. ने क्लिंटन के ईमेल की जांच में किसी भी आरोप की सिफारिश नहीं कीः निदेशक


NEW YORK (Reuters) - Anthony Scaramucci’s swift exit as U.S. President Donald Trump’s communications director on Monday has no bearing on the pending sale of the firm he founded, SkyBridge Capital, parties involved in the deal said.  “The transaction remains on track and is expected to close by the end of the summer,” said Robert Rendine, a spokesman for HNA Capital U.S., a subsidiary of Chinese conglomerate HNA Group. HNA, along with holding company Ron Transatlantic EG, in January announced an agreement to purchase a majority stake in SkyBridge, the New York-based hedge fund investment firm. The sale came as Scaramucci planned to join the Trump administration, although it took months for a role to materialize and was not the one he initially anticipated. A representative for Ron was not immediately available, but a person familiar with the company, speaking on condition of anonymity, also said the transaction was on track.  Woomi Yun, a spokeswoman for SkyBridge, also said the deal was proceeding as planned and was expected to close by the end of the summer. She declined to comment on Scaramucci’s exit from the White House and whether he would return to the firm.  Scaramucci did not respond to an email and phone call seeking comment. Trump fired Scaramucci on Monday just over a week after naming him to the job. The move followed an obscene tirade by the Wall Street financier and the appointment of retired Marine Corps General John Kelly as White House chief of staff, sources familiar with the decision said, in the latest staff upheaval to hit the Republican president’s six-month-old administration. The sale of SkyBridge is under review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, known as CFIUS. A spokesman for the Treasury Department, which chairs CFIUS, did not respond to an email request for comment. HNA has been on a multibillion-dollar international acquisition spree, scooping up stakes in companies including Deutsche Bank , Old Mutual Asset Management  and Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc . HNA’s chief executive officer, Adam Tan, recently pushed back against media reports that the aviation-to-financial services conglomerate faces mounting pressure from its bankers and regulators, even as the pace of its acquisitions slows.

Summary: स्कारामुची नाटक का स्काईब्रिज की लंबित बिक्री पर कोई असर नहीं हैः एच. एन. ए.


UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia on Thursday cast its 10th veto of United Nations Security Council action on Syria since the war began in 2011, blocking a U.S.-drafted resolution to renew an international inquiry into who is to blame for chemical weapons attacks in Syria. The mandate for the joint inquiry by the U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which found the Syrian government used the banned nerve agent sarin in an April 4 attack, expires on Friday. A resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, France, Russia, Britain or China to be adopted. The U.S. draft text received 11 votes in favor, while Russia and Bolivia voted against it and China and Egypt abstained. The vote sparked a war of words between Russia and the United States in the council, just hours after White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said President Donald Trump believed he could work with Russian President Vladimir Putin on issues like Syria. The April 4 sarin attack on Khan Sheikhoun that killed dozens of people prompted the United States to launch missiles on a Syrian air base. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley warned after the council vote on Thursday:  We will do it again if we must.  Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said the U.S. draft resolution was not balanced.  We need a robust, professional mechanism that will help to prevent the proliferation of the threat of chemical terrorism in the region and you need a puppet-like structure to manipulate public opinion,  Nebenzia said. Syrian ally Russia withdrew its own rival draft resolution to renew the inquiry, known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM), after unsuccessfully pushing for its proposal to be considered second and not first, as council rules required. However, following the vote on the U.S. draft, Bolivia then requested a vote on the Russian text. It failed, receiving only four votes in favor, seven against and four abstentions. Nebenzia said he was  deeply disappointed  and that those who voted against the Russian draft  bear the full brunt of responsibility for the cessation of operation of the JIM.   After the meeting ended Japan circulated a draft resolution to roll over the mandate for the inquiry for one month, diplomats said. It was not immediately clear when the council could vote. Ahead of the council votes on Thursday, Trump urged the Security Council in a Twitter post to renew the inquiry, saying it was needed to prevent Assad from using chemical weapons. While Russia agreed to the 2015 creation of the JIM, it has consistently questioned its findings, which also concluded that the Syrian government used chlorine as a weapon several times. Russia has now vetoed 10 resolutions on Syria, including blocking an initial U.S. bid on Oct. 24 to renew the JIM, saying it wanted to wait for the release two days later of the inquiry s report that said the Syrian government used sarin.  Russia has killed the Joint Investigative Mechanism,  Haley said.  In effect Russia accepts the use of chemical weapons in Syria. How then can we trust Russia s support for supposed peace in Syria?  Syria agreed to destroy its chemical weapons in 2013 under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States.  We condemn the use of chemical weapons by anyone,  Nebenzia said.

Summary: रूस ने सीरिया की कार्रवाई पर संयुक्त राष्ट्र का 10वां वीटो डाला, जांच के नवीनीकरण में बाधा डाली


WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will meet with congressional leaders next week to discuss “end-of-year legislative issues,” a White House spokeswoman said on Wednesday. Republicans are rushing to pass a major tax bill before the end of the year, and lawmakers need to pass legislation to fund the government and raise the nation’s debt ceiling. “The president will be meeting with congressional leaders next week to discuss end-of-year legislative issues,” White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said.

Summary: ट्रम्प अगले सप्ताह विधायी मुद्दों पर कांग्रेस के नेताओं से मिलेंगे-व्हाइट हाउस


MUMBAI (Reuters) - First he tried messaging friends, but WhatsApp was down. Then, the credit card readers at his clothing store weren t working. Ride-sharing apps were offline too.  Harsh Madhok, who runs a clothing business in Jaipur, a city of three million people, had read about internet shutdowns elsewhere in India.     Now he was in the middle of one in his city in central India, as authorities tried to damp down unrest following a traffic incident that led to clashes between police and locals.  It s very frustrating,  said Madhok, 45, of the Sept. 9 shutdown.  These things leave you feeling like you don t know what s going on.  Under the rule of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India s Hindu nationalist leader, Internet shutdowns have escalated sharply in the world s largest democracy.  According to a database maintained by the Software Freedom Law Centre, an online advocacy group in New Delhi, government officials ordered shutdowns 42 times between January and August in 2017. That compares with six times in all of 2014, when Modi first came to power. This year the shutdowns were spread over 11 states, compared to just one in 2012. The disconnections, which state governments have said are necessary for maintaining public order, typically happen without official explanation.  They have followed farmer agitations, protests by a minority community calling for government jobs, and public violence sparked by a Facebook post. The frequency of the shutdowns has raised concerns that internal security is being used as a justification to clamp down on freedom of expression. That refrain has been heard more frequently since Modi s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), won elections in 2014 with an emphasis on security.  If citizens are using the internet to mobilize themselves, then how is shutting down the internet any different from suppressing dissent?  an editorial in Mint asked in July. Until this year, shutdowns were implemented under colonial-era curfew laws that were used as the basis for rules requiring internet service providers to shut off connections at the request of any government agency. In early August, the Ministry of Communications issued new explicit rules that formalized the power of states and the central government to block the internet.  These rules are among the first of their kind in a democracy,  said Raman Jit Singh Chima, policy director of Access Now, a U.S.-based organization that works on technology policy and digital rights worldwide.  How they re used, and their scale - they seem to be creating an architecture where blocking is legitimized,  Chima said.  What s changed, I think, is that officials have greater knowledge of the power they can utilize,  said Apar Gupta, a lawyer who handles free-speech cases before the Supreme Court. Other countries, such as Egypt, have also used internet shutdowns, and China controls the flow of online information through an extensive firewall. However, analysts like Chima worry about the frequency of the shutdowns in India, which have risen sharply since Modi came to power. From January 2012   the date of the first shutdown recorded by the Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC)   to May 2014, when the BJP swept out the ruling coalition headed by the Congress party, local and federal officials ordered 12 shutdowns. Since Modi s election, 89 shutdowns have been ordered, with 74 at the behest of his party or its allies at the central, state and district levels, an analysis of SFLC data showed. So far, the shutdowns have been met with little opposition, apart from frustration expressed by users like Madhok over the curtailing of online services.  There s been no outcry about the shutdowns because it s perceived to be for the greater good,  said Nitin Pai, the co-founder of the Takshashila Institution, a Bangalore think tank. Nalin Kohli, a national spokesman for the BJP, said the shutdowns were acceptable in cases  where rumor-mongering or motivated misinformation could lead to the incitement of violence.  He added:  It is not the norm, it is the exception.   In Jaipur, the shutdown lasted two days. But disconnections can last hours, weeks, and even months. In a June statement, Human Rights Watch said  the authorities in Jammu and Kashmir suspended mobile internet services in the Kashmir region from July to November  in 2016.  The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said the restrictions in the Kashmir region, where 100 people have died in clashes since troops killed a militant leader in July 2016, had  the character of collective punishment.  In 2016, Gupta, the lawyer, argued before India s Supreme Court on behalf of a law student who had earlier approached the Gujarat High Court to restrict internet shutdowns. The High Court disagreed, saying that officials used their powers responsibly. The Supreme Court declined to hear the matter, letting the high court s verdict stand.

Summary: भारत में शांति बनाए रखने के लिए जाल रोके जाने से बेचैनी बढ़ रही है


OSLO (Reuters) - A Norwegian court sentenced a 17-year-old Russian citizen to nine months in jail on Monday for making a small explosive device and bringing it to the center of Oslo in April. Prosecutors had sought a two-year sentence for the teenager, saying he had frequented Islamist websites, become radicalised and possessed images of Islamic State members killing prisonners.  The teenager, who denied any wrongdoing, said he had been planning to detonate the device in a forest near his home. The device was placed in central Oslo on a busy Saturday night in April, one day after a truck attack in Stockholm in neighboring Sweden killed five people.   The Oslo police bomb squad said the device was about 30 cm (1 ft) across and appeared capable of causing only a small amount of damage.[L8N1HH0LT] Soon after the discovery of the device, Norwegian police raised the country s security threat level. The teenager has lived in Norway since 2010 and has previously applied for asylum. The status of that application was not immediately clear.  In 2011, far-right mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik set off a car bomb in Oslo that killed eight people and destroyed Norway s government headquarters, before going on a shooting rampage, killing 69 people at nearby Utoeya island.

Summary: नॉर्वे विस्फोट मामले में रूसी किशोर को जेल की सजा सुनाई गई


TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - The Honduran presidential candidate leading after a partial count of votes said he would review whether to keep a base stationed with U.S. troops if he wins the election, but also promised to deepen security co-operation. Honduras has been slow to release the results of Sunday s election. Although U.S.-friendly President Juan Orlando Hernandez had been tipped to win, partial results show an upset, with gregarious television star Salvador Nasralla leading. One of the poorest nations in the Americas with one of the world s highest murder rates, Honduras has been blighted with years of gang violence. Nasralla has tapped into widespread disillusionment about the country s future, particularly among young voters. But his win is not yet certain. As results started flowing on Tuesday evening, Nasralla s original five-point lead had narrowed to just over 1.5 percentage points, with about 72 percent of ballot boxes counted. In a television interview on Tuesday evening, an angry Nasralla said the election was being stolen from him and urged his supporters to flock to the capital, Tegucigalpa, to protest.  In an earlier interview with Reuters on Tuesday, the 64-year-old Nasralla said, if he did triumph, he would talk to the United States about 500 U.S. troops stationed at the Soto Cano air base, also known as Palmerola, two hours  drive from Tegucigalpa.  I need to see what benefit there is for Honduras from having a base like Palmerola,  Nasralla said.  The U.S. presence was established in the 1980s to help the United States in its fight against left-wing insurgencies in Central America. In 2008, former President Manuel Zelaya said he would turn the base into a civilian airport to serve the coffee-exporting country of 9 million people.  A year later, Zelaya was ousted in a coup that his ally, former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, said was orchestrated from the base. U.S. officials denied any involvement in the coup.  Nasralla, a self-described centrist, said he would deepen security ties with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, and that Honduras would remain the United States  best ally in Central America.  When the United States passes me its list of people it wants to extradite ... I m not even going to look at it. I m simply going to sign it and give the order,  he said.  I m willing to extradite ex-presidents, lawmakers, ministers.  Honduras is riddled with corruption that breeds on rampant impunity, drug trafficking and gang violence. U.S. officials were aware of his economic and social policy positions, he added.   I m certain that I won t have any problems with the United States,  he said. The United States has longstanding military ties to Honduras and few ideological allies among the current crop of Central American presidents. In Mexico, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador leads opinion polls for next year s presidential election. Nasralla said that Zelaya would be an influential person in his government and that the former president s wife, Xiomara Castro, would serve as his vice-president. Zelaya, widely viewed as a traditional Latin American leftist due to his previous friendship with Chavez, commands considerable concern in Washington. Many observers believe him to be the true power behind Nasralla s coalition. Nasralla said the concerns were unfounded, and that he would not pursue a close relationship with Venezuela. But he also hinted that Zelaya could return to the presidency in the future.  He said he did not want to change new rules allowing presidential re-election, apparently contradicting his previous opposition. His alliance was formed specifically to block Hernandez s bid for a second term. Nasralla said that he would not run for a second term, but that Zelaya could choose to run in 2022 and benefit from the lack of term limits. Ironically, Zelaya was ousted in 2009 after he proposed a referendum on those re-election rules. Earlier on Tuesday, Hernandez told supporters he still expected to win the election, but urged people to wait for the official results to come through.  Given the nearly two-day lag in releasing results, a Hernandez victory would be certain to enrage the opposition, and could spark tensions.  They re doing everything they can to take away our triumph,  Nasralla wrote on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon, as the lead started narrowing.

Summary: होंडुरास के राष्ट्रपति पद के उम्मीदवार अमेरिकी सैनिकों की उपस्थिति की समीक्षा करेंगे


LONDON (Reuters) - British foreign minister Boris Johnson will travel to Moscow later this year to discuss international security issues, the British government said on Friday. Johnson canceled what would have been the first visit to Russia in five years by a British foreign secretary in April due to a poison gas attack in a rebel-held area of Syria that prompted the United States to carry out missile strikes. Moscow backs Syrian government forces against rebels in the country s civil war. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov subsequently met Johnson at the United Nations in September.   Our relationship with Russia is not straightforward,  Johnson said in a statement.  That is all the more reason to be talking to Russia - to manage our differences and cooperate where possible for the security of both our nations and the international community.  Relations between Britain and Russia have been strained since the murder of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006, a killing which a British inquiry said was probably approved by President Vladimir Putin. Britain s foreign ministry said Johnson, on his Moscow visit, wished to discuss North Korea, Iran and regional stability in the Middle East, as well as security for the 2018 World Cup soccer tournament in Russia.  We will continue to challenge Russia s approach where we disagree, whether that is Russia s actions in Syria or its aggression toward Ukraine. My visit will provide an opportunity to talk about these issues and more, face-to-face,  Johnson said.

Summary: सुरक्षा पर चर्चा करने के लिए ब्रिटेन के जॉनसन इस साल मास्को की यात्रा करेंगे


HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nordic countries agreed on Monday to step up defense cooperation and exchange more air surveillance information because they are worried about Russia s increasing military activity. The countries have increased defense spending and cooperation with each other and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.  The ... situation is a common concern for the Nordic countries ... We aim at strengthening our national defense and finding cooperation to better address security concerns,  Finnish Defence Minister Jussi Niinisto told a news conference. It followed a meeting with his Swedish, Danish and Norwegian counterparts and a representative from Iceland. He said the agreement to exchange more air surveillance data would contribute  positively to situational awareness  as well as flight safety. The Nordic countries have accused Russia of repeatedly violating their airspace in the past few years. The countries also agreed to cooperate on procurement and said they planned to use a common Nordic combat uniform.  We see an aggressive Russia that is building up its forces, renewing its materials, having new missiles in Kaliningrad ... That is the new picture in our part of the world,  said Danish Defence Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen Kaliningrad lies between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea. Other ministers said Russia did not pose a current threat. The Baltic sea region is a zone of heightened tensions between Moscow and the West. Russia has increased its military capability in its Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad and criticized NATO for stationing anti-missile shields in eastern Europe. Norway, Denmark and Iceland are NATO members, while Sweden and Finland - which shares an 833 mile (1,340 km) border with Russia - have remained militarily non-aligned. Finland said last week it was planning large-scale military drills with the Nordics, the United States and other allies as early as 2020. The ministers will meet in Helsinki on Tuesday with a Northern Group that includes Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland and the Baltic states. U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis will also join the meeting.

Summary: रूस की चिंताओं के कारण नॉर्डिक राज्यों ने रक्षा सहयोग बढ़ाया


HARARE (Reuters) - The spectacular rise and fall of Zimbabwe s uncompromising First Lady, Grace Mugabe, had an unusual beginning: an office affair. It was the early 1990s when President Robert Mugabe s eye fell upon one of his shy young typists. She would become his wife, a ferociously ambitious politician and, more than two decades later, a contributor to the downfall of her 93-year-old husband. President Mugabe is trying to cling to power after the military took over this week in response to his purge of vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa, 75, a liberation war fighter and Grace s sworn enemy. Mnangagwa s aides even accused her of trying to poison him with ice cream from her dairy farm this year. She denies this. Grace, now 52 and under house arrest in Harare, had been calling for Mnangagwa s removal for weeks as the two fought an increasingly bitter winner-takes-all contest to succeed the man who has led Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980. It wasn t the first time Grace had wielded influence over her husband. When it appeared former vice president Joice Majuru was in line to succeed Mugabe in 2014, he fired her following public rallies at which Grace derided Majuru. This time she appears to have gone too far. The purge of Mnangagwa and many of his comrades irked the military, who had no intention of allowing Grace and her youthful Generation 40 (G40) faction of the ruling ZANU-PF to take over the political reins. Deeply unpopular among much of the Zimbabwean public due to her alleged corruption and volatile temper, Grace does not have the liberation credentials the military believe are required to be a Zimbabwean ruler. The lavish lifestyle that earned her the nickname  Gucci Grace  and the political ambition that almost propelled her to the presidency were not evident when she met her future husband.  He just started talking to me, asking me about my life,  she told a South African journalist in 2013.  I didn t know it was leading somewhere. I was quite a shy person, very shy.  At the time, they were both married. President Mugabe s wife, Sally, was desperately ill and died in 1992. Grace and Robert were married in 1996 and have three children.  DIS-GRACE  At first Grace stayed out of politics and was better known for her spending habits, including buying mansions in South Africa, rare diamond jewelry, and Rolls-Royce limousines for her playboy sons. Then there are the repeated allegations of violence. In Singapore in 2009, photographer Richard Jones says Grace flew into a rage when he tried to take her picture. She ordered her bodyguards to hold his arms back while she punched him repeatedly in the face. Grace denies the assault. In August this year, Grace was accused of beating a young South African model who was partying with her sons. According to Gabriella Engels, Grace burst into a hotel room where she was talking with friends and whipped her with an electric cable as bodyguards looked on. Grace says she acted in self-defense after Engels tried to stab her with a knife. The reports of lavish spending and explosive temper earned her the title  Dis-Grace  back home in Zimbabwe, where an economic crisis had left most of the 16 million population mired in poverty and unemployment. Zimbabweans also question Grace s credentials. Eyebrows were raised in 2014 when she gained a PhD in three months. Her thesis, on the changing role of the family, has never been published. This hasn t stopped her trying to reach the political summit. When Majuru was removed, Grace became head of the ZANU-PF Women s League, giving her a seat at the party s top table. She used her political platform to take on Mnangagwa and his allies and made a push to succeed her frail husband.  They say I want to be president. Why not? Am I not a Zimbabwean?  Grace said at a recent rally.

Summary: ग्रेस मुगाबेः कार्यालय कर्मचारी जो जिम्बाब्वे पर शासन करना चाहती थी


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mexico’s Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said on Wednesday the issue with renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is “not tearing apart what has worked” but rather finding a way to make the agreement better. Negotiators from the United States, Mexico and Canada kicked off talks on Wednesday to update the 1994 trade deal.

Summary: नाफ्टा वार्ता में महत्वपूर्ण बात यह है कि 'जो काम किया है उसे फाड़ना नहीं': मेक्सिको


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. senators on Wednesday delayed a committee vote on President Donald Trump’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency after the panel’s Democrats boycotted the meeting, saying that nominee Scott Pruitt doubts the science of climate change. The boycott in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee delayed the transition to a new administrator for the agency. Senator Ben Cardin, a Democrat, said he could not support Pruitt, a Republican and the attorney general of Oklahoma, for a public health position because he “denies the sum of empirical science and the urgency to act on climate change.” At a committee confirmation hearing last month Pruitt, who has sued the agency he intends to run more than a dozen times on behalf of the oil-drilling state Oklahoma, expressed doubt about climate change science. But Pruitt said he would be would be obliged for now to uphold the agency’s 2009 “endangerment finding” that carbon dioxide emissions harm public health. The finding is the agency’s basis for regulations on those emissions.  Senator Tom Carper, the panel’s top Democrat, said Pruitt had provided “woefully inadequate” answers to written questions and had not named one agency regulation that he supported. “If Mr. Pruitt is serious about leading this important agency, he should be more than willing to provide straightforward answers to our fundamental questions,” Carper said. Republicans decried the move by the Democrats. “This is simply a senatorial temper tantrum,” said Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska, another oil state. Trump, like Republican Senator Jim Inhofe on the panel, has called climate change a hoax. Trump has promised to make changes at the agency including doing away with previous President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan that cracks down on emissions from coal-fired electricity generators. The plan was suspended by the Supreme Court last year. John Konkus, a spokesman for Pruitt’s confirmation team, said Democrats and the EPA under Obama had “put politics and rhetoric ahead of their core work and ahead of the welfare of the American public.” In 2013, Republican senators on the panel boycotted then- Obama’s second term pick for the agency, Gina McCarthy, saying they were “completely unsatisfied” by her answers to more than 1,000 written questions they had asked her. She was eventually confirmed.

Summary: सीनेट डेमोक्रेट्स द्वारा बहिष्कार में ट्रम्प के ई. पी. ए. चुनाव मतदान में देरी


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said Americans should feel good about the economy after the latest jobs report on Friday showed the U.S. unemployment rate at an eight-year low of 4.9 percent. Obama, in his eighth and final year in office, made a relatively rare and unexpected appearance in the White House briefing room to talk about how the economy had recovered under his watch. “We have recovered from the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, the worst in my lifetime and the lifetime of most of the people in this room,” Obama said, noting the unemployment rate was 10 percent in 2009, when he took office. “We’ve done it faster, stronger, better, more durably than just about any other advanced economy,” Obama said. The White House has griped that Obama does not get enough credit for turning the economy around, a complaint Obama joked about on Thursday during a visit from the Golden State Warriors basketball champions. “You defied the cynics, you accomplished big things, you racked up a great record, and you don’t get enough credit - I can’t imagine how that feels,” Obama said, drawing laughter. On Friday, he acknowledged that “there’s still anxiety and concern about the general direction of the economy,” noting the job losses, stock market plunges and free fall in the housing market in 2007-2008 were still fresh in Americans’ memories. Obama said “softness” in China, Europe and other economies presented challenges to U.S. exporters and he said it was important for the United States to “keep our foot to the accelerator” to further strengthen the economy. “We should feel good about the progress we’ve made, understanding that we have still got more work to do,” he said, noting the budget he will propose to Congress on Tuesday will have ideas for job creation and retraining. Obama slammed Republican candidates in the race to replace him in the Nov. 8 presidential election for “talking down” the economy. “I know that’s still inconvenient for Republican stump speeches as their doom-and-despair tour plays in New Hampshire,” Obama said, referring to the primary election in the state on Tuesday.

Summary: अमेरिका में बेरोजगारी दर में गिरावट के बाद ओबामा ने जीत का दावा किया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Tuesday that if China doesn t follow the United Nations sanctions approved on North Korea, he will seek new financial sanctions on Beijing to cut off access to the U.S. financial system.  Mnuchin told a conference broadcast on CNBC that China agreed to  historic  sanctions on North Korea on Monday in a UN Security Council vote.  If China doesn t follow these sanctions, we will put additional sanctions on them and prevent them from accessing the U.S. and international dollar system, and that s quite meaningful,  Mnuchin said.

Summary: ट्रेजरी के म्नुचिनः चीन को उत्तर कोरिया पर नए प्रतिबंधों का सामना करना पड़ सकता है


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s tax-cut plan will generate growth, but not nearly enough to replace trillions of dollars in lost revenues, while rising deficits could even take back some of the economic gains, fiscal experts said on Wednesday. Core principles of the plan, unveiled on Wednesday, rely heavily on so-called “dynamic scoring,” a budget analysis method that assumes tax cuts will boost economic activity, thus generating more revenues. Such assumptions have been at the heart of Republican tax orthodoxy since Ronald Reagan used them to justify massive tax cuts in 1981 that were derided at the time by critics as “voodoo economics.” On Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Trump’s plan would “pay for itself with growth” and closing of some deductions and credits.  From the details released so far, Maya MacGuineas, who heads the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), said the plan could add $3 trillion to more than $5 trillion to the federal deficit over five years. “No credible dynamic score is going to show that this bill is paid for,” MacGuineas said. “The growth effects, which are real and important, add decimals of percentage points to growth, not full percentage points.” Her budget watchdog group estimates that to pay for the plan, U.S. growth would need to be sustained at 4.5 percent annually, a level not seen on a sustained basis since the late 1960s and early 1970s. Mnuchin has said that he expects the plan to boost sustained U.S. growth above 3 percent, but CRFB estimates that even this level would require massive increases in productivity and that a rapidly retiring baby-boom generation is working against high growth rates. Doug Elmendorf, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, one of the agencies that provides cost estimates for legislation, said he sees little chance of Congress finding “politically acceptable” offsets to pay for the plan, and the rise in borrowing could work against Trump’s goals. “The resulting increase of the deficit will have a dampening effect on the economic activity that will offset at least part of the stimulative effects of lower tax rates,” said Elemendorf, now dean of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. The higher federal debt load will “crowd out” capital for private use, dampening economic activity in the long run, Elmendorf said. Republicans in Congress are hoping to use budget procedural rules that allow a 51-vote threshold in the Senate to pass tax reform, which would limit the cuts to 10 years.  But if the plan creates deficits in the years beyond the first decade, it could also run afoul of another procedural rule that could require 60 votes in the Senate.    Tax cuts that expire in a decade could cause another U.S. fiscal crisis like the one in 2012, when tax cuts passed under George W. Bush expired. “What the Trump Administration has proposed is not permanent tax reform, but a ten-year tax cut and the creation of the most phenomenal fiscal cliff ever in 2028,” Chris Krueger, a political analyst at Cowen and Co in Washington, said in a note to clients.

Summary: ट्रम्प अमेरिकी कर योजना विकास के साथ खुद के लिए भुगतान करने का प्रबंधन नहीं करेगीः विशेषज्ञ


NEWARK, N.J. (Reuters) - The bribery case against U.S. Senator Bob Menendez survived a key test on Monday, as the federal judge overseeing his trial rejected a defense motion to throw out the most serious charges. U.S. District Judge William Walls in Newark, New Jersey, allowed the trial to proceed on all charges. He had suggested on Oct. 16 that he was inclined to dismiss the core of the case based on a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that narrowed the legal definition of public corruption.

Summary: न्यायाधीश ने अमेरिकी सीनेटर मेनेंडेज़ के खिलाफ रिश्वत के आरोपों को खारिज करने से इनकार कर दिया


(Reuters) - The Trump administration plans to move quickly on its goals to overhaul taxation, healthcare and immigration laws, Vice President-elect Mike Pence said in an interview published by the Wall Street Journal on Friday. President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20,  is preparing 100-day and 200-day plans aimed at fulfilling his campaign promises and stimulating economic growth, Pence said. The administration’s first priorities would include curbing illegal immigration, abolishing and replacing Obama’s signature healthcare program, nominating someone to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court and strengthening the military, he told the newspaper.  Pence was interviewed after introducing Trump at a rally in  Cincinnati on Thursday. It was the start of what Trump aides have billed as a thank-you tour of battleground states that helped the Republican defeat his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton on Nov. 8. The Trump administration would work with congressional leaders by next spring “to move fundamental tax reform” meant to “free up the pent-up energy in the American economy,” Pence was quoted as saying by the Journal. This would include lowering marginal tax rates, cutting the corporate tax rate “from some of the highest in the industrialized world” to 15 percent and repatriating corporate cash held overseas, Pence told the newspaper. Both chambers of the U.S. Congress are controlled by Republicans. “I think the only thing that will surprise them is that Washington, D.C., is going to get an awful lot done in a short period of time,” Pence told the newspaper when asked what might surprise voters about the Trump administration.

Summary: पेंसः ट्रम्प कर, स्वास्थ्य सेवा, आप्रवासन पर तेजी से ध्यान केंद्रित करेंगेः डब्ल्यूएसजे


DETROIT (Reuters) - Two former Michigan representatives forced out of the state legislature last fall for a scheme to cover up their extramarital affair face felony charges of misconduct and related counts, officials said on Friday. Todd Courser, who resigned from his seat in Lapeer County, was charged with three counts of misconduct while in office, each of which carries a five year prison term, as well as a perjury charge, which has a 15-year sentence, according to the Michigan attorney general’s office. Cindy Gamrat, who was removed from her Allegan County seat, faces two charges of misconduct while in office. Warrants have been served for both former lawmakers. “We are demonstrating to the citizens of Michigan that no one is above the law, not even those who walk in the hall of power,” Attorney General Bill Schuette told reporters. Schuette’s office and Michigan State Police launched an investigation into the two disgraced lawmakers last fall. Schuette said on Friday that Courser and Gamrat both lied to investigators, and that Courser asked his staff to send out false emails to cover up the extramarital affair. Courser had devised a plan to distribute an email falsely claiming he had sex with a male prostitute, according to the Detroit News. That claim, Courser said, would have blunted the political impact of an actual affair if it had come out. He was charged with perjury for allegedly lying while giving testimony to a House committee, Schuette’s office said. Both won seats in 2014 as Tea Party conservatives and devout Christians. They tried to regain their seats last year, but lost in the Republican primary. Courser and Gamrat were not immediately available for comment on Friday.

Summary: मिशिगन के अपदस्थ सांसदों पर अफेयर को छिपाने के गंभीर आरोप लगे


YANGON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will focus on the need to stop the violence and stabilize Rakhine state when he meets with the head of Myanmar s military on Wednesday, a senior State Department official told journalists in Manila. More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh since the military launched a counter-insurgency clearance operation in Rakhine late August. A top UN official has described it as  ethnic cleansing  by Buddhist-majority Myanmar. Tillerson was due to hold talks in with Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar s less that two year old civilian administration, and the head of the armed forces, Senior General   Min Aung Hlaing, in the capital Naypyitaw in a bid to stem the refugee crisis.

Summary: टिलरसन म्यांमार के जनरल से मिलेंगे, हिंसा रोकने पर जोर देने की जरूरतः राज्य विभाग के अधिकारी


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tensions between the United States and Russia will not “spiral out of control” following last week’s U.S. cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Tuesday, describing it as a one-off response to Syria’s use of banned chemical weapons. President Donald Trump, in his biggest foreign policy decision since taking office in January, ordered the strikes after concluding that Syria waged a nerve gas attack in rebel-held territory that killed 87 people, many of them children.  Russia, which has advisers on the ground aiding Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, warned the U.S. strike could have serious consequences. Syria denies involvement. “It will not spiral out of control,” Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon. “I’m confident the Russians will act in their own best interest and there is nothing in their best interest to say they want this situation to go out of control.” Mattis has repeatedly warned that the U.S. military remained ready to act again should Assad use chemical weapons, saying on Tuesday that Assad would “pay a very, very stiff price.”    At the same time, he acknowledged that Trump had only authorized the single attack, meaning the U.S. military would not automatically have the authority to strike again should Washington determine another case of chemical weapons use. Mattis also sought to downplay concerns about Pentagon mission creep, saying the U.S. military’s focus in Syria was still fighting Islamic State militants, not becoming entangled in Syria’s messy civil war between Assad and his opponents. “The rest of the campaign stays on track exactly as it was before Assad’s violation,” Mattis said. The incident has chilled U.S. relations with Moscow after a presidential campaign during which Trump frequently called for an alliance with Russia to fight Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq. It has also led the Trump administration to harden its attitude against Assad weeks after top U.S. officials said they were more concerned with defeating Islamic State militants than getting Assad out of power. “I don’t see a peaceful, stable Syria in the future that has Assad in charge,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer said on Tuesday. “I don’t see a future Syria that has (Assad) as the leader of that government.” U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson denounced Russian support for Assad as he prepared to fly to Moscow on Tuesday. “It is clear to us the reign of the Assad family is coming to an end,” Tillerson told reporters in Italy. U.S. intelligence indicates that Syrian Su-22 aircraft taking off from Shayrat airfield delivered the nerve agent sarin, according to a White House report given to reporters. Mattis said there was no doubt that Damascus was responsible. Although some U.S. officials have strongly hinted they suspect Russia, which has a presence at Shayrat, may have known something about the planned attack, none have conclusively linked Moscow to the incident itself. Mattis suggested the United States did not have firm evidence that Russia had foreknowledge or was complicit in the chemical attack. “It was very clear that the Assad regime planned it, orchestrated it and executed it and beyond that we can’t say right now. We know what I just told you, we don’t know anything beyond that,” Mattis said, when asked whether Russia had a role.

Summary: U.S.-Russia सीरिया पर तनाव 'नियंत्रण से बाहर' नहीं होगाः मैटिस


OTTAWA/WINNIPEG (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is taking a low key approach to dealing with U.S. President Donald Trump, seeking to avoid clashes while indirectly signaling the two leaders’ differences to a domestic audience. Insiders acknowledge the cautious strategy could anger progressives whose support helped bring Trudeau to power in 2015 but say for now, he has no choice but to hold fire: Canada sends 75 percent of its exports to the United States and could suffer if it is targeted by Trump. “Why poke a grizzly bear while it’s having lunch? Trump has just got into office and he is formulating his economic plans,” said one senior political source. While Trudeau’s close friendship with former President Barack Obama was often referred to as a “bromance” and “dude-plomacy,” Canadian prime ministers have not always had close ties with U.S. presidents. Still, few in Ottawa have experienced anything like Trump, insiders said. “He is totally unpredictable,” said another government source. Although Canada regards the United States as its closest ally, Trudeau has yet to visit Washington to see Trump.  A visit tentatively scheduled this week was canceled after a shooter killed six Muslims in a Quebec mosque and no new date has been set, said two people familiar with the matter. Michael Kergin, a former Canadian ambassador to Washington, said Trudeau’s caution was wise. “He’s been playing it pretty well by restraining the temptation to be publicly critical of the president. At the same time, it’s a delicate balance,” said Kergin, now a senior adviser at law firm Bennett Jones. Trudeau was also right not to follow British Prime Minister Theresa May in rushing to Washington to “gin up a special relationship,” only to watch Trump make an unpopular move on immigration after she left, Kergin said. Trump labeled a refugee swap deal with Australia “dumb” on Thursday after a telephone call with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull that the Washington Post reported was acrimonious. Turnbull kept any sparring behind closed doors. Trudeau, however, has taken indirect shots. When Trump signed orders banning people from seven Muslim-majority states, Trudeau tweeted that Canada was open to those fleeing war. His chief spokeswoman blasted U.S. network Fox News on Tuesday for a tweet falsely claiming the Quebec gunman was of Moroccan origin. But she said nothing publicly when Trump’s spokesman said the attack on Muslims showed why it was important to suspend immigration from Muslim nations.   This approach infuriates the opposition New Democrats, who have called on Trudeau to denounce Trump’s “racist” immigration policy.  Trudeau team members acknowledge that over time, Liberals could lose support before a 2019 election if the prime minister is deemed not to be standing up for Canadian values such as inclusiveness. “That is a risk, but we’ll address it closer to the time,” said the first Ottawa insider. Surveys show the Liberals have a healthy, but narrowing, advantage over their nearest rivals. Pollster Nik Nanos of Nanos Research said it was too early for Trudeau to be aggressive.  “He has to avoid making any kind of criticism. Trump has a very thin skin and he’s quick to lash out,” he said.

Summary: कनाडा के ट्रूडो ने अभी के लिए यू. एस. 'ग्रिजली भालू' को नहीं टोकने का फैसला किया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Thursday it is increasingly likely that the Republican Party’s presidential nominating convention will be a contested one this summer. If no candidate can assemble 1,237 Republican delegates by July, the party’s presidential nominee for the November  election will be chosen by convention delegates in Cleveland, Ohio, in what could be four days of political drama, carried live on national television. Republican front-runner Donald Trump warned on Wednesday of “riots” if he is denied the party’s presidential nomination, after he scored big wins in primaries in Florida, Illinois and North Carolina on Tuesday. It is uncertain whether Trump can get the 1,237 convention delegates he needs before July.  Ryan denounced Trump’s “riots” comment, saying it was unacceptable to even hint at violence. He said he had to study up on the convention process, since he would be chairing the event and wanted to be sure the rule of law prevails.  “Nothing has changed other than the perception that this is more likely to become an open convention than we thought before.     So, we’re getting our minds around the idea that this could very well become a reality,” Ryan said. As chairman, Ryan will be charged with opening and closing the event, and overseeing the presidential nomination roll call - possibly more than one, if the first is not decisive. He would also be expected to deal with any floor fights on controversial motions that arise. “I will have to obviously bone up on all the rules and all of those things,” Ryan told reporters. “My goal is ... to be neutral and dispassionate, and to make sure that the rule of law prevails, and to make sure that the delegates make their decision however the rules require them to do that,” he said. The last time delegates arrived at a Republican convention without a clear nominee, in Kansas City in 1976, then-President Gerald Ford edged out challenger Ronald Reagan on the first ballot. The last time it took multiple ballots to get a Republican nominee was in 1948, when Thomas Dewey was nominated.  Ryan has been touted as a possible dark-horse candidate for president this year, but the speaker repeated Thursday that he is not running. He said he told former House Speaker John Boehner, who had suggested Ryan be a candidate in case of a deadlocked convention, to “knock it off.”

Summary: हाउस स्पीकर रयान का कहना है कि रिपब्लिकन कन्वेंशन में चुनाव लड़ने की अधिक संभावना है


MANILA (Reuters) -  Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte s eldest son quit as vice mayor of the southern city of Davao on Monday, citing his being linked to a drug smuggling case by opponents and personal problems from a failed marriage as reasons for the move. Paolo Duterte announced his resignation during a special session of the Davao City Council. Davao is President Duterte s hometown and its mayor is Paolo s younger sister, Sara Duterte-Carpio.  There are recent unfortunate events in my life that are closely tied to my failed first marriage,  the vice mayor said, in a statement made available to media.   These, among others, include the maligning of my reputation in the recent name dropping incident in the Bureau of Customs  smuggling case and the very public squabble with my daughter.  Paolo testified at a senate investigation in September into a seized shipment of around $125 million worth of narcotics from China after opponents of the president, who has instigated a fierce crackdown on the drugs trade, said they believe his son may have helped ease the entry of the shipment at the port in Manila, the Philippine capital. Paolo has denied any involvement. More recently, he has been involved in an online spat with Isabelle, his 15-year-old daughter from his first wife. Paolo has called her  embarrassing  on Facebook after she complained on Twitter about being treated badly by her father. The president s office, the mayor s office and other members of Paolo s family did not immediately respond to Reuters  requests for comments.

Summary: फिलीपींस के दुतेर्ते के बेटे ने गृहनगर दावो के उप महापौर पद से दिया इस्तीफा