(Removes erroneous reference to Montreal as Quebec s capital in this Dec. 5 story) By Sonya Dowsett and Allison Lampert MADRID/MONTREAL (Reuters) - A flight by businesses from Catalonia s independence crisis has drawn comparisons with Quebec, the French-speaking Canadian province that deterred investors with a decades-long independence push. Opinion polls showed support for pro-independence parties at just under 50 percent as campaigning for a Dec. 21 election began on Tuesday, enough to dampen the Madrid government s hopes the vote would end a volatile standoff over secession.  Carrying on as before means chaos,  said Jordi Alberich, managing director of Cercle d Economia, a business association based in the Catalan capital, Barcelona.  What has happened is tremendously serious and it could get even worse.  The election is seen by pro-independence parties as a de-facto referendum on a split from Spain following a banned plebiscite which led to clashes between Spanish police and protesters on Oct 1 and the subsequent dismissal of the Catalan government by Madrid. While it may not propel secessionist forces back into regional government, it could end up sustaining their cause and thereby putting off investors over the longer term. Almost 3,000 firms have shifted their headquarters outside the region, many to Madrid, mirroring the flight of companies from Quebec s Montreal for Toronto before and after its first referendum in 1980 delivered defeat for independence. The Catalan exodus has so far been administrative rather than physical, with companies effectively shifting domiciles, the  brass plate  of the business, to avoid legal and tax complications rather than moving staff or operations. They fear secession would leave them outside the euro zone and exposed to the uncertain policies and possible tax grabs of a new republic burdened by the region s existing large debts. Madrid, eager for unionist parties to score a clear victory on Dec. 21 and put the crisis to rest, says the economic impact will be only short term, but there are signs the uncertainty is already affecting longer-term investment decisions.  If I had been contacted by an American investor asking:  Should I open a small office in Barcelona?  three or four years ago, I would have said:  Yes, of course ,  said the Spain country head for an international investment bank.  Now I can t say that anymore ... The pain inflicted by the independence process scares money away.   He, like other bankers and chief executives, declined to speak publicly because the issue is divisive. Those who speak out for one side or other can become targets of criticism and abuse. The Spanish government has already trimmed its 2018 economic growth forecast to 2.3 percent due to the Catalan crisis, and its Independent Authority of Fiscal Responsibility has warned of a bigger impact next year if it is not resolved. Tourism to the region and its main draw card, Barcelona, has slumped, leading to Spain s first fall in retail sales for more than three years. Spain s economy minister recently noted a  strong deceleration  in Catalonia in the final quarter, and the central bank published an analysis last month based on scenarios that implied impacts ranging from modest to dramatic. In the worst case, it said political uncertainty could cut economic growth by 2.5 percentage points between end-2017 and 2019. In a recent report,  Catalonia, history repeating? , Canadian bank RBC Capital Markets compared it with the fallout from Quebec s 1995 referendum, which delivered the narrowest of defeats for independence and was followed by economic decline. "Even if the independence parties fall short of a majority, the damage may have already been done," it said of Catalonia's December vote. Graphic tmsnrt.rs/2AGBazV The Spanish region s pro-independence camp says it pays more than its fair share of tax income out of the country s 17 regions and during the five-year economic crisis its stronger economy propped up poorer areas such as Andalusia and Murcia. The biggest pro-independence party, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), has dismissed government warnings secession would cause economic damage and launched its campaign focusing on social issues like housing and energy poverty. Quebec s independence movement, triggered by the 1960s push by French-speakers for economic equality, led to a decline in the province s English-speaking population and its economic affluence, with banks and companies moving their head offices from Montreal, then a thriving financial hub. Canada s second-most populous province has made economic strides in recent years, but it continues to lag other provinces in indicators like household income. Between 1970 and 1981, as pro-sovereignty Parti Quebecois gained political momentum, Montreal lost 18,992 head offices in resource, manufacturing and service sectors, according to a 1983 University of Saskatchewan study. Canada s largest life insurance company was among those which left in 1977. Politics was not the only factor. Montreal s older manufacturing economy was already facing competition from Toronto.  The relative decline of Montreal   and the exodus of headquarters   was no doubt exacerbated by politics but was not solely caused by politics,  said Richard Shearmur, a professor at McGill University s school of urban planning in Montreal. The Catalan crisis has drawn interest in Quebec: last week, two members of Catalonia s secessionist Candidatura d Unitat Popular (CUP) party spoke at an event organised by a left-leaning Quebec opposition party. But Quebec polls show support for separation, especially among young adults, is in decline, while in Catalonia polls show pro-independence parties continue to command strong support. The last Catalan government was made up of a coalition of pro-independence parties under the name  Together for Yes , propped up by CUP lawmakers who did not join the government s ranks. Opinion polls show pro-independence and pro-unity parties almost in a dead heat for December s election.

Summary: निवेशकों को कैटेलोनिया के मतदान में क्यूबेक के रंग दिखाई देते हैं


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday the  Senate would take up before the end of this month a bill passed by the House of Representatives dealing with Puerto Rico’s debt. McConnell, the top Republican Senate leader, was speaking to reporters. Backers of the House-passed bill are hoping the Senate signs off on the legislation before July 1, when Puerto Rico faces a deadline on a $1.9 billion debt payment.

Summary: सीनेट जून के अंत तक हाउस प्यूर्टो रिको ऋण विधेयक पर विचार करेगीः मैककोनेल


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Wednesday he was trying to be as constructive as possible as he looked forward to a Thursday meeting with presumptive U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump aimed at unifying the fractured party. But Ryan, the most high-profile Republican who has not endorsed Trump, warned that bringing party factions together would take some time after a grueling primary season. This suggested there might not be instant results from his get-together on Thursday with Trump and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party has shaken the party’s establishment and prompted soul-searching over whether to reluctantly get behind him or cede any role in the Nov. 8 presidential election, when Hillary Clinton is expected to be his Democratic opponent. Trump faces pressure to tone down his rhetoric and clarify his policy positions as a step toward unifying the divided party. Some Republicans were alarmed at his recent talk of raising taxes on the wealthy. But Ryan also faces some pressure to smooth things over after saying last week that he was not yet ready to support Trump, an extraordinary statement that was seen as keeping some distance from the presumptive nominee and leaving open his prospects for running for president in 2020. “What we are trying to do is to be as constructive as possible, to have a real unification,” Ryan told reporters on Wednesday after a meeting with his fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives. “After a tough primary, that’s going to take some effort. We are committed to putting that effort in,” said Ryan, who said he does not really know Trump. “I want to be a part of that unifying process so that we are at full strength this fall, so that we can win this election. We cannot afford to lose this election to Hillary Clinton,” Ryan said. Ryan, 46, a conservative congressman since 1999 who ran unsuccessfully for vice president in 2012, and Trump, a 69-year-old billionaire real estate developer, are very different Republicans who do not see eye to eye on many things, from immigration to trade. But Ryan said on Wednesday these differences are not at issue, because “this is a big-tent party. There is plenty of room for different policy disputes in this party.” One lawmaker at Wednesday’s House Republican gathering raised a request for Trump to meet with all Republicans in the House, a source who was in the room said, asking not to be named. Such a meeting is expected to happen sometime before the July 18-21 Republican convention in Cleveland, the source said. On Tuesday night, Ryan spoke by phone for about 16 minutes with a Trump emissary, former Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, according to Carson spokesman Armstrong Williams. Some Republicans have been rankled by Trump’s policy proposals, including his declaration that NATO is obsolete and his call to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the country. But some House lawmakers who back Trump expressed their displeasure with Ryan for withholding his support at a small group meeting with the speaker later on Wednesday, an aide to one of the lawmakers said. Trump has the potential to appeal to a greater number of Republican voters but must make changes to make party leaders more comfortable with him, Republican officials and lawmakers say.  “I think he has to show what kind of president that he would be,” Senator Susan Collins said. “But I believe he can do that, so I am not one who has foreclosed the possibility of eventually supporting him. But I need to see more from him.” After Ryan said last week he was not yet ready to support Trump, the candidate fired back that he was not ready to support Ryan’s agenda. But on Wednesday, Trump had warm words for Ryan and said he thought they were doing fine. “We’ll see what happens” at the meeting, Trump told Fox News. “If we make a deal, that’ll be great. If we don’t, we’ll trudge forward like I’ve been doing.”

Summary: ट्रंप से मुलाकात से पहले रयान ने सुलह का रुख अपनाया


MONROVIA (Reuters) - Former soccer star George Weah maintained his lead over Vice President Joseph Boakai as more provisional results from Liberia s presidential election were announced on Friday. If current trends hold, they would contest a run-off next month to decide which of them will succeed Nobel Peace Prize winner Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in what would be Liberia s first democratic transfer of power in decades. Based on returns from about a third of the country s more than 5,000 polling stations, Weah has obtained 39.6 percent of votes cast, with Boakai of the ruling Unity Party (UP) at 31.1 percent, the elections commission said.   We are still confident that there are places that we believe are our strong support ... We are very optimistic that with reports coming in, UP is going to take the lead,  Boakai told Reuters after Friday s results announcement. Charles Brumskine, a lawyer, was running third with 9.3 percent. The final certified results from Tuesday s poll must be announced by Oct. 25, although the provisional first-round winner is expected to be known in the coming days. Weah, a striker for Paris Saint-Germain and AC Milan who won FIFA s World Player of the Year in 1995, came second to Johnson Sirleaf in a 2005 election that drew a line under years of civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. He has served in the senate since 2014 for the opposition Congress for Democratic Change.  Boakai, the former head of Liberia s petroleum refinery company and agriculture minister, has served as vice president since 2006. Brumskine and the parties of two other candidates have said the vote was marred by fraud and vowed to contest the results. But they have not provided evidence of cheating and international observers said they saw no major problems.  Liberia, Africa s oldest modern republic, was founded by freed U.S. slaves in 1847 but its last democratic power transfer occurred in 1944. Johnson Sirleaf s nearly 12 years in office have seen the country s post-war peace consolidated, although Liberians complain about poor public services and widespread corruption.

Summary: लाइबेरिया चुनाव में फुटबॉल स्टार और वीपी ने शुरुआती बढ़त बरकरार रखी


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Time Magazine named U.S. President-elect Donald Trump its person of the year on Wednesday, citing the upheaval in American politics brought about by the New York businessman’s election campaign and victory. “It’s hard to measure the scale of his disruption,” Time said in its announcement, noting Trump’s career as real estate magnate and reality television star before he won the presidency on Nov. 8. The Republican president-elect, who will be sworn in on Jan. 20, ran an unconventional and controversial campaign against Democrat Hillary Clinton. Time noted that views of him were  deeply divided. “For those who believe this is all for the better, Trump’s victory represents a long-overdue rebuke to an entrenched and arrogant governing class,” the magazine said. “For those who see it as for the worse, the destruction extends to cherished norms of civility and discourse, a politics poisoned by vile streams of racism, sexism, nativism.” The magazine said its short list for person of the year included Clinton, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and singer Beyonce. “It’s a great honor, it means a lot,” Trump told NBC’s “Today” show in an interview shortly after the announcement. But he rejected Time’s characterization of the country as fractured. The magazine’s cover called him the “president of the divided states of America.” “I didn’t divide them, they’re divided now,” he told NBC. “We’re going to put it back together.” He added: “I think putting ‘divided’ is snarky.” Time makes its annual choice based on the impact a person has on world events, for better or for worse. Last year the magazine chose German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Previous winners have ranged from Mahatma Gandhi to Adolf Hitler.

Summary: टाइम पत्रिका ने अमेरिकी राष्ट्रपति-निर्वाचित ट्रम्प को वर्ष का व्यक्ति नामित किया


ANKARA (Reuters) - The Syrian-Kurdish YPG militia has attacked a Turkish military observation post in Syria s Idlib with mortars, the state-run Anadolu news agency said on Monday, adding that there were no casualties. The Turkish military retaliated after the attack, which hit the observation post in the Darat Izza region and some civilian settlements with five mortars, Anadolu said.

Summary: सीरियाई कुर्दिश मिलिशिया ने सीरिया के इदलिब में तुर्की की चौकी पर हमला किया, कोई हताहत नहीं हुआः अनादोलु


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Representatives of Facebook, Twitter and Google have been asked to appear on Nov. 1 at hearings on alleged Russian interference in U.S. politics called by the U.S. Senate and House Intelligence Committees, officials said. Facebook and Twitter have already agreed to send representatives to the Senate committee hearing, a Congressional official said.  An official knowledgeable about House committee plans declined to disclosed whether the companies have agreed to send representatives to its hearing. Sources said that Google had not yet notified the committees that it would send representatives to the hearings, though ultimately the company was likely to do so.

Summary: सोशल मीडिया कंपनियों को रूस पर अमेरिकी कांग्रेस की सुनवाई के लिए बुलाया गया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump, leading the pack for the Republican presidential nomination, has reached out to House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, it was disclosed on Wednesday, even as some Republicans strategized over how to potentially knock the billionaire businessman’s campaign off its stride. The Trump campaign contacted Ryan’s office late on Monday, a spokeswoman for Ryan said, on the eve of the Super Tuesday nominating contests in which hundreds of delegates were at stake for the Republican candidates. The Trump overture also came a day before the Republican speaker publicly admonished Trump over his failure to repudiate the backing of his candidacy by a white supremacist group. Trump responded with a warning to Ryan. “We have heard from the (Trump) campaign, but the two have not yet spoken,” Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck said in a statement released on Twitter on Wednesday, one day after Trump swept victories in seven of the 11 states that held Republican nominating contests on the biggest day in the primary season. Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong did not describe the subject or details of Trump’s overture to the speaker. After months of shrugging off Trump’s candidacy, Republicans are now grappling with the distinct possibility that he may be their party’s nominee to take on the Democrats, likely led by Hillary Clinton, in the Nov. 8 presidential election.  A Republican senator who asked not to be identified, and a senior aide to another Republican senator, told Reuters that many private conversations were underway on Capitol Hill about finding ways to slow or stop Trump. “People are leaning on people everywhere,” to convince Ohio Governor John Kasich to exit the race so the party can unify around a single Trump alternative, either Senator Marco Rubio or Senator Ted Cruz. Kasich, however, was expected to stay in at least until the Ohio primary on March 15. At the core of such conversations, said the aide and another senior Senate Republican aide, who also asked not to be identified, is avoiding a deadlock at the Republican convention, which “would forever result in the loss of our base,” said one of the aides.  Ryan has until this week avoided commenting on the presidential race. On Tuesday he said any Republican nominee must reject any group “built on bigotry.” The remark was aimed at Trump after Trump did not immediately repudiate support from a white supremacist group over the weekend. Trump fired back at Ryan in a news conference in Florida on Tuesday night, warning the speaker would pay “a big price” if he stood in Trump’s way. Ryan’s office did not say on Wednesday when the two men might talk. But Ryan’s spokesman said the speaker planned to be in touch with all of the Republican presidential candidates soon to discuss the conservative policy agenda.  (Reporting by Susan Cornwell and Richard Cowan; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Leslie Adler) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production.

Summary: ट्रम्प ने रयान को ओवरचर किया, जबकि रिपब्लिकन पार्टी के भविष्य के साथ कुश्ती लड़ रहे हैं


MOSCOW (Reuters) - Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono said on Friday he agreed with his Russian counterpart to speed up work on economic cooperation on disputed islands in the Pacific, and on easing travel restrictions to the islands. His Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov said earlier after talks in Moscow with Kono that progress had been made on confidence-building measures related to the islands, known is Russia as the Kurile islands and in Japan as the Northern Territories.

Summary: रूस और जापान विवादित द्वीपों पर आर्थिक सहयोग पर काम तेज करने पर सहमत हुए


BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Deir al-Zor military airport in eastern Syria, which the Syrian army recaptured this month from Islamic State, began functioning again on Monday for the first time in nearly a year, Syrian state media and a monitoring group said. The military base is seen as a valuable asset for the Syrian army as it presses its campaign against Islamic State in Deir al-Zor province. Two planes landed and took off from the base on Monday, state TV reported - the first such activity there since September 2016, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said. Monday s flights carried aid to Deir al-Zor, Syrian state media and the British-based Observatory said. On Sunday, the United Nations said it had halted costly airdrops to the city as a land corridor opened.  The U.N. has estimated that some 93,000 people were living in  extremely difficult  conditions in government-held parts of Deir al-Zor during the Islamic State siege and were supplied by air drops to the base. Syrian government forces and their allies broke Islamic State s three year siege of Deir al-Zor earlier this month, reaching the government-held enclave in the city and the adjacent air base. The Syrian army and U.S.-backed militias are fighting separate offensives against Islamic State in the province, the jihadist group s last major stronghold in Syria.

Summary: सीरिया का देइर अल-ज़ोर हवाई अड्डा फिर से काम कर रहा हैः राज्य मीडिया, मॉनिटर


LONDON (Reuters) - A British man detained in the United States for allegedly trying to wrestle a gun from a police officer at a Donald Trump rally is suffering from severe mental illness and risks dying in prison, his mother said on Tuesday. Michael Sandford, 20, is due to face trial in Nevada on Aug. 22. He has pleaded not guilty to two felony counts of being an illegal alien in possession of a firearm and one felony count of impeding and disrupting the orderly conduct of government business. His mother, Lynne Sandford, told a news conference in London that her son, who has been diagnosed in the past with autism, depression and other mental health conditions, had been on suicide watch in a Nevada prison for the past three weeks. She portrayed her son as a compassionate, child-like man who enjoyed watching “Peppa Pig”, a British children’s television program, and who was bewildered and frightened by his incarceration. She said her son had attempted to take his own life when he was 14 years old and was suffering from anorexia. Michael Sandford was arrested after an incident at a Trump rally at the Treasure Island hotel in Las Vegas on June 18, and later told an investigator he wanted to kill the Republican presidential candidate, according to U.S. court papers. He has not been charged with attempted murder. “I accept that Michael has tried to do a bad thing but he is mentally ill and is not a bad or dangerous person,” said his mother, adding that she had last spoken to him on the phone on Sunday. “He kept breaking down and sobbing on the phone, saying ‘please, please, I just want to come home’. He’s very remorseful ... He’s just in a really bad way,” she said. Sandford has launched a campaign to have her son repatriated to Britain so he could be treated in a secure medical facility. She has raised $25,950 through the crowd-funding website Crowd Justice to pay for legal and other expenses. She said a British consular official who had visited her son in prison had reported that he was shackled and handcuffed. “It’s not clear that Michael actually understands what he has done,” said Saimo Chahal, the family’s British lawyer, speaking alongside Lynne Sandford. “Because of his Asperger’s, OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) and other psychological conditions there is a question mark over whether he’s fit to plead and to undergo the trial process in the States,” she said. Chahal said she was working to provide the public defenders’ office in Nevada with independent evidence of Michael Sandford’s mental illness. She expected the trial to be postponed by at least 56 days initially to allow time for that. She hoped a trial would not happen and that Sandford would be repatriated to Britain as part of a plea bargain agreement.

Summary: ट्रम्प बंदूक की घटना में ब्रिटिश अमेरिकी जेल में मर सकता हैः माँ


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump asked then-FBI Director James Comey to shut down an investigation into ties between former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russia, an associate of Comey, who has seen the memo, said on Tuesday. The associate told Reuters that the details of the document as first reported by the New York Times were accurate.  “I hope you can let this go,” Trump told Comey, according to  the language of the memo, which the source confirmed. The White House denied the report in a statement to reporters, saying it was “not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the President and Mr. Comey.” The memo was written by Comey immediately after his meeting in the White House Oval Office with Trump one day after Flynn resigned over his contacts with Russians.  Flynn’s resignation came hours after it was reported that the Justice Department had warned the White House weeks earlier that Flynn could be vulnerable to blackmail for contacts with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak before Trump took power on Jan. 20. A spokeswoman for the FBI declined to comment on the details of the memo.

Summary: ट्रंप ने कोमी से फ्लिन की जांच बंद करने को कहाः सूत्र


ROME (Reuters) - Former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Thursday that if he wins next year s election he will slash taxes and sharply raise Italy s budget deficit rather than lower it as European Union rules require.  We ll take the deficit back up to 2.9 percent (of gross domestic product), cutting taxes by 30 to 50 billion euros  ($59.14 billion),  Renzi, the leader of the ruling Democratic Party (PD) said in an evening television interview. Italy has committed to cutting its deficit to 1.6 percent of GDP next year from a targeted 2.1 percent this year, and to balance its budget in 2020. Brussels says reining in the annual deficit toward zero is necessary to bring down Italy s huge public debt of 132 percent of GDP, the highest in the euro zone after Greece s. Ahead of the election to be held by May, all the main parties have come out strongly against the EU s so-called  fiscal compact , agreed in 2012, which sets tough deficit and debt-reduction goals for high-debt countries like Italy. Renzi resigned as prime minister in December last year after losing a referendum over his plans for constitutional reform, and was replaced by his former Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni. He first floated the idea of hiking the deficit in a book he published in July, but the suggestion drew a cool response from Italian government ministers and the EU. The PD is running neck-and-neck with the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, according to opinion polls, but the surveys suggest no party or coalition is likely to win a working majority in parliament.

Summary: इटली के रेंजी ने चुनाव जीतने पर बजट घाटे को बढ़ाने का संकल्प लिया


MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - El Salvador on Wednesday launched the first commission to search for persons who went missing during its civil war, 25 years after the end of a conflict that left tens of thousands dead and hundreds of cases unresolved. The commission will seek victims who were killed or kidnapped by the military or rebels in order to help reunite them with families or return their remains People who lost relative have demanded such measures for decades.   With this instrument we reaffirm our deep commitment to pay off the historical debt to the victims of forced disappearances in the country,  said leftist President Salvador Sanchez Ceren, himself a former guerrilla leader.  The 1980-1992 war in El Salvador between the U.S.-backed army and the Marxist guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), now the ruling party, left 75,000 dead and 8,000 missing.  We hope that this commission gives something to the mothers because what we want is at least for them to tell us what they did with them,  said Sof a Hernandez, 74, who is looking for a daughter, two brothers and four nephews. Last year, the Supreme Court of Justice declared unconstitutional an amnesty law that has prevented since 1993 investigating and prosecuting those accused of war crimes in the impoverished Central American country.

Summary: अल सल्वाडोर ने गृहयुद्ध से लापता लोगों को खोजने के लिए आयोग की शुरुआत की


BEIJING (Reuters) - China s top banking regulator Guo Shuqing and veteran banker Jiang Chaoliang are front runners to succeed Zhou Xiaochuan, the country s longest-serving central bank head who is likely to step down next year, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.  The leadership reshuffle at the People s Bank of China (PBOC) is closely watched in global financial markets as monetary policy changes and any moves to further liberalize the financial system of the world s second-large economy would have repercussions well beyond China s shores. The 69-year-old Zhou has spearheaded financial reforms and boosted the yuan currency s global clout, as well as the central bank s policy influence, since taking up his post in 2002. Zhou is likely to retire around the time of the annual session of parliament next March, according to the seven sources with ties to the leadership and close to the central bank.  Guo, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC), whose rich experience and reformist credentials are similar to Zhou s, is seen as more qualified for the job, the sources said. However, Jiang, the Communist Party chief of Hubei province, has the backing of some top leaders and is seen as having a roughly equal chance of getting the post, they noted.  The PBOC and the CBRC did not respond to Reuters  requests for comment, while officials at Hubei Communist Party committee s propaganda department declined to comment.   Yi Gang, 59, a PBOC vice-governor who has a PhD in economics from the University of Illinois, is the leading in-house candidate to replace Zhou but is not seen as a frontrunner.  Yi is a well-trained economist who is supported by Zhou, but his background as a  sea turtle  - a colloquialism for Chinese who have returned from overseas - means he is less likely to gain the full trust of China s leaders, the sources said.  One of the sources, who correctly predicted a reshuffle of the country s top banking, securities and insurance regulators in 2011, said that Guo is most favored, helped by his understanding of the financial markets and the global economy.  His appointment would boost confidence,  the source added.      Guo, 61, was summoned back to Beijing in February to lead the CBRC after serving as governor of Shandong province for four years - his second regional stint after serving as a deputy governor of Guizhou province in the late 1990s. Under Guo s leadership earlier this year, the CBRC started what was widely dubbed a  regulatory windstorm  to force banks to cut debt, but he later eased up after the move fueled fears of a liquidity crunch. [nL4N1I63IR] Guo, a philosophy major and once a visiting scholar at Oxford University, has served as a deputy central bank governor and as the top foreign exchange regulator, and steered China Construction Bank Corp to a successful share listing. As a top stock market regulator, Guo cemented a reputation as an economic reformer. Still, Jiang, who has also alternated between top financial and provincial posts, remains a formidable challenger for Guo, the sources said. The 60-year-old Hubei party chief, who has had stints as an assistant central bank governor and head of China Development Bank, the country s largest policy bank, emerged as a possible successor to Zhou relatively recently. Jiang has been credited with helping to transform the state-owned Bank of Communications, which had been plagued by bad debt, into a bank with a stronger balance sheet that then listed in Hong Kong and Shanghai.  Jiang is not a dark horse, his resume is very good and he has been proved to be very capable,  said one of the sources. Whoever takes the helm of the central bank will face tough challenges as he will have to walk a tightrope between ensuring economic stability and pushing reforms to rein in debt risks. Zhou has been steering broad financial and currency reforms, loosened controls on interest rates and moved away from what had effectively been a yuan peg to the U.S. dollar - a step along the path to turning it into a global currency on a par with the greenback.  In terms of international investors, Guo may offer more continuity,  said Rob Subbaraman, Nomura s chief economist and head of global markets research for Asia-ex-Japan.   That s really what he represents - continuity of wanting to, over time, move to a more liberalized capital and financial market, and trying to ensure very good regulation and supervision.  Zhou stayed on past retirement age after he was appointed a vice chairman of the top advisory body to parliament in 2013, a move that made him a national leader.  The PBOC still has limited policy independence despite growing influence under Zhou.  Unlike western central banks, the PBOC does not have the final word on adjusting interest rates and the value of the yuan. The basic course of monetary and currency policy is set by the cabinet or by the Communist Party s ruling Politburo.

Summary: चीन के बैंकिंग नियामक, हुबेई के प्रमुख केंद्रीय बैंक के प्रमुख बनने की दौड़ में सबसे आगेः सूत्र


DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Friday he would not seek the resignation of his deputy prime minister, as sought by the party propping up his government, and would be forced to call an election if that demand was not withdrawn by Tuesday.  I think if we don t resolve matters by Tuesday, then there will be a motion of no confidence in the Tanaiste (deputy prime minister) and, if the opposition come together to remove the Tanaiste, then we will be into an election at that point,  Varadkar told the national broadcaster RTE.

Summary: मंगलवार तक संकट टला नहीं तो आयरलैंड में दिसंबर में चुनाव होने वाले हैं-प्रधानमंत्री


NEW YORK (Reuters) - If Mitt Romney wanted to ignite a debate about Donald Trump’s suitability for the White House, he succeeded, at least on social media. Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, lambasted Trump in a speech on Thursday in Salt Lake City, Utah, calling him “a phony, a fraud” and saying it is his “very brand of anger that has led other nations into the abyss.” The speech was the latest illustration of how badly many mainstream Republican leaders want to stop Trump, the clear front-runner, from becoming his party’s nominee in November’s election to succeed President Barack Obama. Twitter users posted about Romney roughly 38 times per second following the speech, according to Zoomph, the social media analytics firm. Romney’s sentiment score, a measure of how positively users discuss a topic, was slightly higher than Trump’s following the speech, according to the firm. “Mitt Romney” quickly became one of the top-trending topics on Twitter in the United States. In a period of about four hours after the former Massachusetts governor’s speech, there were roughly 529,000 tweets about Romney on Twitter, according to the social media site’s own metrics. Trump’s response, a barrage of put-downs, also generated social media attention. During a campaign rally in Maine, Trump said Romney had begged him for an endorsement when he was running for the White House in 2012. Trump’s comments included what many on social media perceived to be a crude sexual joke. “I could have said ‘Mitt, drop to your knees,’ he would have dropped to his knees,” Trump said. “Is this a new @realDonaldTrump campaign slogan? ‘Drop to Your Knees, America ... and they did,’” tweeted Carl Spry (@CarlSpry). “His secret to getting so many endorsements?”. Romney said later he would not have accepted Trump’s endorsement four years ago if Trump had spoken as he does now. “If Trump had said 4 years ago the things he says today about the KKK, Muslims, Mexicans, disabled, I would NOT have accepted his endorsement,” Romney tweeted (@MittRomney), referring to the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan. In his speech slamming both Trump’s policy proposals and his style, Romney did not endorse any of the candidates remaining in the Republican race. But one of them, Ohio Governor John Kasich (@JohnKasich), tweeted his support, saying “Well said, @MittRomney.” A photo of the presidential Oval Office accompanied the tweet, with the caption “The One Who Works Here Should Make Us Proud.” Other presidential candidates remained quiet on Twitter, but Republican South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley offered her support for Romney. “A brilliant speech by @MittRomney. No one can ever question his love for our party and our country. #TrueLeadership #MittRomney,” she (@nikkihaley) tweeted.  Haley has endorsed Marco Rubio, a U.S. senator from Florida,  for the Republican nomination.  (Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus and Melissa Fares in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Frances Kerry) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production.

Summary: रोमनी के ट्रम्प विरोधी भाषण ने सोशल मीडिया पर बहस छेड़ दी


BEIJING (Reuters) - China s cabinet on Thursday passed new rules to regulate religion to bolster national security, fight extremism and restrict faith practiced outside organizations approved by the state. The document passed by Premier Li Keqiang updates a version of rules put into place in 2005 to allow the regulation of religion to better reflect  profound  changes in China and the world, the official Xinhua news agency reported. The rules released by Xinhua use strong and specific language about the need to protect China s national security against threats from religious groups.  Religious affairs maintenance should persist in a principle of maintaining legality, curbing illegality, blocking extremism, resisting infiltration and attacking crime,  the regulations say.      Any group or individual must not create conflict or contention between different religions, with a single religion or between religious individuals and non-religious individuals,  they say.     President Xi Jinping has emphasized the need to guard against foreign infiltration through religion and the need to prevent the spread to  extremist  ideology, while also being tolerant of traditional faiths that he sees as a salve to social ills.         The officially atheist ruling Communist Party says it protects freedom of religion, but it keeps a tight rein on religious activities and allows only officially recognized religious institutions to operate. The rules, which come into effect on Feb 2, 2018, also place new oversight on online discussion of religious matters, on religious gatherings, the financing of religious groups and the construction of religious buildings, among others. They increase existing restrictions on unregistered religious groups to include explicit bans on teaching about religion or going abroad to take part in training or meetings. Much of China s religious practice, which has seen a revival in recent decades despite being effectively banned in the 1960s during the Cultural Revolution, takes place in informal settings not recognized, though often tolerated, by the authorities. Religious education is also further brought under the umbrella of the state in the regulations, with explicit provisions on the establishment and registration of religious colleges. New provisions are included on the use and raising of religious funds and on taxation. Donations from foreign groups or individuals, for example, are banned, while donations over 100,000 yuan ($15,420) need to be reported to authorities. Fines for breaking the rules have also been increased in the new version and the organizers of unapproved events can now be subject to fines from 100,000 to 300,000 yuan, rather than the previous 1 to 3 times the amount spent on the event.

Summary: चीन ने 'चरमपंथ को रोकने' के लिए धर्म के नियमन को कड़ा किया


BEIRUT (Reuters) - The U.S. missile attack on a Syrian airbase on Friday will elevate political tensions but is not expected to lead to a military escalation, said a senior official in the military alliance supporting President Bashar al-Assad. “No doubt this will leave great tension on the political level, but I do not expect a military escalation. Currently I do not believe that we are going towards a big war in the region,” the official told Reuters. The official, a non-Syrian, spoke on condition of anonymity, saying this was a personal assessment and not said as a spokesman for the alliance. Assad has been backed in the six-year-old war by Russia, Iran and Shi’ite militias from countries including Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan. “I doubt that the Russians will escalate towards military friction with the Americans,” the official said.

Summary: अमेरिकी हमले से सैन्य वृद्धि नहीं होगीः दमिश्क समर्थक अधिकारी


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Allegations of sexual misconduct against U.S. Senator Al Franken should be dealt with through the normal process, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Monday. “The president is not going to weigh in on every single matter like this. We think this should go through a due process,” Sanders said to reporters on Monday. “That’s something that Senator Franken should be the first to address.”

Summary: सेन फ्रैंकन के खिलाफ आरोप सामान्य प्रक्रिया से गुजरने चाहिएः व्हाइट हाउस


ACCRA (Reuters) - At least six people were killed and 35 injured, mostly suffering burns, after an explosion at a natural gas depot in Ghana s capital, fire service spokesman Billy Anaglate said on Sunday. The explosion on Saturday evening at the state-owned GOIL liquefied natural gas station sent a giant fireball into the sky above the eastern part of Accra, causing frightened residents to flee their homes in large numbers. Others were forcibly evacuated. Ghana, a relatively new oil and gas producer, has suffered several recent accidents including an explosion in 2015 that killed around 100 people. Several onlookers at the scene of the explosion expressed anger on Sunday that the government had not done more to prevent another fatal accident.

Summary: घाना में गैस डिपो में विस्फोट, कम से कम छह लोगों की मौत


COLOMBO (Reuters) - A young British journalist was dragged into a river and killed by a crocodile while holidaying in Sri Lanka, the country s navy said on Friday. Paul McClean, 24, who worked in London for the Financial Times, had been on a surfing holiday in the popular eastern coastal area of Arugambay when the incident occurred on Thursday, the navy said. His body was found on Friday.  The navy was able to recover the body of a foreigner who had been snatched by a crocodile on September 14,  the Sri Lankan navy said in a statement. The BBC quoted an eyewitness as saying local people had heard him screaming for help as he was pulled into the river.  By the time they went to the spot where the croc attacked, they couldn t save him because already the crocodile had pulled him inside the water so they couldn t see what was going on,  it quoted Fawas Lafeer, the owner of a surf school, as saying.  McClean, an Oxford University graduate with a first-class degree in French, joined the FT as a graduate trainee two years ago and worked most recently for the fastFT news service.  The FT s managing editor James Lamont described McClean as  a talented, energetic and dedicated young journalist  who had had  a great career ahead of him  at the newspaper.  Our thoughts are with his family, friends and loved ones,  Lamont said.

Summary: श्रीलंका में छुट्टियां मना रहे ब्रिटिश पत्रकार को मगरमच्छ ने मार डाला


AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - The heavily Hispanic Texas border county of El Paso filed suit in federal court on Monday to halt a new law backed by the state’s Republican leaders to punish “sanctuary cities,” saying the measure was vague, cruel and unconstitutional. The law in Texas, which has the longest border with Mexico of any U.S. state, takes effect on Sept. 1 and calls for jail time for police chiefs and sheriffs who fail to cooperate in U.S. immigration enforcement. The suit filed in a U.S. district court in San Antonio on behalf of the county and its sheriff names Republican Governor Greg Abbott and others as defendants. It said the law would invite unlawful racial profiling in the county of about 800,000 people where more than 80 percent of the population is of Hispanic heritage. “History and logic supports that all Texans will not be equally subject to this harassment,” the lawsuit said. Abbott has said the law known as Senate Bill 4 will keep criminals off of the streets. Republican backers said there were no major sanctuary cities in Texas and the law would prevent any from adopting such practices. It was the first such legislation approved by a state since Republican Donald Trump, who has called for a crackdown on illegal immigration, became president in January.  The Texas law allows police to ask people about their immigration status during a lawful detention. Supporters have said immigrants who do not break the law have nothing to fear, while critics contend it allows police to detain people for up to 48 hours for immigration checks, even for minor infractions such as jaywalking. Earlier in May, the small Texas border town of El Cenizo, filed suit against the Texas law in federal court, and many major Texas cities and counties have said they also intend to sue to halt its implementation. The Texas law has also faced criticism from the police chiefs of the state’s largest cities, who said it would divert resources from fighting crime to immigration law enforcement. They added it would widen a gap between police and immigrant communities and eliminate the potential for assistance from immigrants in solving or preventing crimes. In a newspaper editorial last week, Abbott along with the sheriff of Hidalgo County, a border county with about the same population as El Paso, said SB 4 specifically prohibited racial profiling and discrimination.

Summary: एल पासो की टेक्सास सीमा काउंटी ने 'अभयारण्य शहरों' के कानून को रोकने के लिए मुकदमा दायर किया


TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Monday he believed  U.S. President Donald Trump understood the value of free trade and that he would keep pitching a multinational trade pact that Trump’s administration has vowed to exit. “I believe President Trump understands the importance of free and fair trade, so I’d like to pursue his understanding on the strategic and economic importance of the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) trade pact,” Abe told a session of parliament’s lower house. Abe also said he wanted to strengthen the U.S.-Japan security alliance, based on mutual trust with Trump. “When we met last time, I believed him to be trustworthy, this belief has not changed today,” Abe added, referring to his November meeting with then-president-elect Trump. Abe also said Tokyo wanted to explain how its companies have contributed to the U.S. economy, a stance the Japanese government has adopted to try to fend off threats of a “border tax” on imports into the United States. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said separately that Tokyo would closely monitor any impact of the new U.S. administration’s policies on its companies and that he wanted to deepen economic ties between the two countries. Trump took office as the 45th president of the U.S. on Friday and pledged to end what he called an “American carnage” of rusted factories and crime in an inaugural address that was a populist and nationalist rallying cry. The new Trump administration said on Friday its trade strategy to protect American jobs would start with withdrawal from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact. The trade deal, which the United States signed but has not ratified, was a pillar of former president Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia, and Abe has touted it as an engine of economic reform, as well as a counter-weight to a rising China.

Summary: जापान के प्रधानमंत्री का कहना है कि टी. पी. पी. पर ट्रम्प की समझ की तलाश करते रहेंगे


(Reuters) - Gulf Coast and Caribbean energy infrastructure began to brace for Hurricane Irma, even as recovery operations from Hurricane Harvey are under way.  On Wednesday, BP Plc said it would evacuate non-essential personnel from its Thunder Horse platform in the Gulf of Mexico. Shell said it was monitoring its Gulf assets.  Buckeye Partners has shut its Yabucoa oil terminal in Puerto Rico and is preparing for the storm at two other marine terminals in Florida and the Bahamas, the company said on Wednesday. Irma ranks as one of the five most powerful Atlantic hurricanes in the last 80 years and the strongest Atlantic storm recorded by the U.S. National Hurricane Center outside the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico.

Summary: फैक्टबॉक्सः कैरेबियाई और खाड़ी तेल कंपनियों ने तूफान इरमा के लिए तैयारी शुरू कर दी है


CHICAGO (Reuters) - Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner on Friday vetoed a legislative fix favored by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel for two of the city’s struggling pension funds and castigated it as a “kick-the-can approach.” The financial footing and credit ratings for the nation’s third-largest city have slipped precipitously as its unfunded pension liabilities grew to $33.8 billion for Chicago’s four retirement systems in the most recent accounting. The plan that passed the Illinois Senate unanimously in January and cleared the House overwhelmingly last December would have granted the state’s blessing to alter the city’s pension repayment schedule for its municipal and laborers’ retirement systems. The systems are projected to run out of money in the coming decade and were depending on legislative sign-off of the city’s enactment of a water and sewer usage tax and telephone surcharge designed to help get them 90 percent funded in 40 years. City officials have acknowledged that more money will be needed starting in 2023 when payments will reach actuarially required levels. But Rauner rejected the package, saying it created a payment schedule that eventually would necessitate a tax increase for Chicago. He said it needed to be part of a broader, statewide pension funding strategy to address Illinois’ $129.8 billion unfunded pension liability. “This is another kick-the-can approach to pension funding that landed Chicago in fiscal crisis in the first place,” Rauner said in a prepared statement. “This bill will create an unsustainable funding schedule that will lead to tax increases without solving the real problem.” A spokesman for the Democratic mayor slammed the Republican governor’s action as an “irresponsible and irrational decision.” “Instead of helping secure the future of our taxpayers and middle-class retirees, the governor chose to hold them hostage – just as he has done to social service providers, schoolchildren and universities across the state,” Emanuel spokesman Adam Collins said in a statement, referring to Rauner’s inability to broker a state budget deal for 21 months. Rauner’s action left Democrats with no ability to block his veto because the pension bailout passed in the previous session of the state General Assembly, which ended in mid-January, and the governor’s only options were to approve or reject the measure. But the city is pinning its hopes on an identical piece of legislation that passed the newly seated state Senate in late January and is awaiting action in the House, Collins said.

Summary: इलिनोइस के गवर्नर ने शिकागो पेंशन तय करने पर वीटो किया, शहर के मेयर नाराज


YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar s government said on Wednesday that police had arrested two Reuters journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo. The reporters had been working on stories about a military crackdown on the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rahkine State that has caused almost 650,000 people to flee to neighboring Bangladesh. The Ministry of Information said in a statement on its Facebook page that the journalists and two policemen face charges under the British colonial-era Official Secrets Act. The 1923 law carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. The reporters  illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media,  said the statement, which was accompanied by a photo of the pair in handcuffs.  It said they were detained at a police station on the outskirts of Yangon, the southeast Asian nation s main city. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo went missing on Tuesday evening after they had been invited to meet police officials over dinner. Reuters  driver Myothant Tun dropped them off at Battalion 8 s compound at around 8 pm and the two reporters and two police officers headed to a nearby restaurant. The journalists did not  return to the car. The Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh say their exodus from the mainly Buddhist nation was triggered by a military counter-offensive in Rakhine state that the United Nations has branded  a textbook example of ethnic cleansing .  Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have been reporting on events of global importance in Myanmar, and we learned today that they have been arrested in connection with their work,  said Stephen J. Adler, president and editor-in-chief of Reuters.  We are outraged by this blatant attack on press freedom.  We call for authorities to release them immediately,  he said. A spokesman for Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi confirmed that the two journalists had been arrested.  Not only your reporters, but also the policemen who were involved in that case,  spokesman Zaw Htay said.  We will take action against those policemen and also the reporters.  In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert emphasized that the agency was  following this closely.  She said that U.S. Ambassador Scot Marciel on Wednesday had a conversation with two government officials in Myanmar who seemed  genuinely unaware  of the situation.   We care about the safety and security of international reporters who are simply just trying to do their jobs. So we re going to continue to try to stay on that,  Nauert said.  The U.S. embassy in Yangon said in a statement posted on its website on Wednesday it was  deeply concerned by the highly irregular arrests of two Reuters reporters after they were invited to meet with police officials in Yangon last night .  For a democracy to succeed, journalists need to be able to do their jobs freely,  the embassy said.  We urge the government to explain these arrests and allow immediate access to the journalists.   The European Union s mission in Yangon also voiced concern.  The EU delegation is closely following their case and we call on the Myanmar authorities to ensure the full protection of their rights,  it said in a statement.  Media freedom is the foundation of any democracy.  The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists called for the reporters  immediate and unconditional release.  These arrests come amid a widening crackdown which is having a grave impact on the ability of journalists to cover a story of vital global importance,  said Shawn Crispin, CPJ s senior Southeast Asia representative. Wa Lone, who joined Reuters in July 2016, has covered a range of stories, including the flight of Rohingya refugees from Rakhine in 2016 and, in much larger numbers, this year. He has written about military land grabs and the killing of ruling party lawyer Ko Ni in January. This year he jointly won an honorable mention from the Society of Publishers in Asia for Reuters coverage of the Rakhine crisis in 2016.  He previously worked for The Myanmar Times, where he covered Myanmar s historic 2015 elections, and People s Age, a local weekly newspaper, where his editor was Myanmar s current Minister of Information Pe Myint. Kyaw Soe Oo, an ethnic Rakhine Buddhist from state capital Sittwe, has worked with Reuters since September. He has covered the impact of the Aug. 25 attacks on police and army posts in the northern Rakhine, and reported from the central part of the state where local Buddhists have been  enforcing segregation between Rohingya and Rakhine communities. He previously worked for Root Investigation Agency, a local news outlet focused on Rakhine issues.  I have been arrest  were the four words that Wa Lone texted to Reuters Myanmar Bureau Chief Antoni Slodkowski on Tuesday evening to let him know what was happening. Very soon after that Wa Lone s phone appeared to have been switched off. Over the next 24 hours, Reuters colleagues in Yangon filed a missing persons report, went to three police stations, and asked a series of government officials what had happened to the two reporters. They got no official information until Wednesday evening.

Summary: म्यांमार में रॉयटर्स के दो पत्रकार गिरफ्तार, आधिकारिक गोपनीयता के आरोपों का सामना करना पड़ रहा है


SYDNEY (Reuters) - A car was deliberately driven into pedestrians in the Australian city of Melbourne on Thursday, injuring up to 14 people, though the motive was not known, police said.  We believe based on what we have seen that it is a deliberate act,  Victorian Police commander Russell Barrett told media in Melbourne.  The motivations are unknown.

Summary: ऑस्ट्रेलियाई पुलिस का कहना है कि मेलबर्न में पैदल चलने वालों को टक्कर मारने वाली कार जानबूझकर की गई थी


BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany s pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) will have to accept smaller income tax cuts than they had previously wanted, their leader said on Tuesday, signaling compromise in discussions with two other parties on forming a new government. FDP leader Christian Lindner said his party would not be able to push for tax relief totaling 30-40 billion euros  ($35-46 billion) and will instead seek to get the Greens and the conservatives to accept an abolition of the  solidarity tax  introduced after reunification in 1990 to support poorer eastern states.

Summary: जर्मनी के फ्री डेमोक्रेट्स ने बड़ी कर राहत की मांग को छोड़ दिया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said before a visit to India next week that the Trump administration wanted to  dramatically deepen  cooperation with New Delhi, seeing it as a key partner in the face of negative Chinese influence in Asia. Speaking on Wednesday, less than a month before President Donald Trump is due to make his first state visit to China, Tillerson said the United States had begun to discuss creating alternatives to Chinese infrastructure financing in Asia. In another comment likely to upset Beijing, he said Washington saw room to invite others, including Australia, to join U.S.-India-Japan security cooperation, something Beijing has opposed as an attempt by democracies to gang up on it. The remarks coincide with the start of a week-long Chinese Communist Party congress at which President Xi Jinping is seeking to further consolidate his power.  The United States seeks constructive relations with China, but we will not shrink from China s challenges to the rules-based order and where China subverts the sovereignty of neighboring countries and disadvantages the U.S. and our friends,  Tillerson told the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.  India and the United States should be in the business of equipping other countries to defend their sovereignty, build greater connectivity, and have a louder voice in a regional architecture that promotes their interests and develops their economies,  Tillerson added. The U.S. decision to expand relations with India almost certainly will upset India s rival, Pakistan, where Tillerson also will stop next week, said a senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity. Pakistan was the main U.S. ally in South Asia for decades, but U.S. officials are frustrated with what they charge has been Pakistan s failure to cut support for the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, where the administration wants India to play a bigger role in economic development. As part of a South Asia strategy unveiled by Trump in August, Tillerson is expected to press Islamabad, which denies aiding the Taliban, to take stronger steps against extremists and allied groups and intensify efforts to pressure them to agree to peace talks with Kabul.  We expect Pakistan to take decisive action against terrorist groups based there that threaten its own people and the broader region,  Tillerson said. Trump has threatened further cuts in U.S. aid to Pakistan if it fails to cooperate. China, a strategic rival to the United States and India, is also vital to Trump s efforts to roll back North Korea s efforts to create nuclear-armed missiles capable of reaching the United States, an issue expected to top the agenda in Trump s Nov. 8-10 Beijing visit. A senior State Department official defended the timing of the speech, saying Tillerson also said he wanted a constructive relationship with China.  For many decades the United States has supported China s rise,  said the official.  We ve also supported India s rise. But those two countries have risen very differently.  In Beijing, foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said China hoped the United States could abandon bias when viewing its actions overseas.  China will never develop itself at the expense of other countries,  Lu told a regular briefing on Thursday.  At the same time we will never give up our justly deserved rights and interests.   Healthy relations between China and the United States are good for the people of both countries and are expected by the Asia-Pacific region, he added. Tillerson did not say what he meant by creating an alternative to Chinese infrastructure financing, but said the Trump administration had begun a  quiet conversation  with some emerging East Asian democracies at a summit in August. He said Chinese financing was saddling countries with  enormous  debts and failing to create jobs.  We think it s important that we begin to develop some means of countering that with alternative financing measures.   We will not be able to compete with the kind of terms that China offers, but countries have to decide what are they willing to pay to secure their sovereignty and their future control of their economies and we ve had those discussions with them as well,  he said.

Summary: चीन के उदय को देखते हुए अमेरिका भारत के साथ मजबूत आर्थिक, रक्षा संबंध चाहता हैः टिलरसन


MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin warned on Friday that the standoff between North Korea and the United States was close to spilling into a large-scale conflict and said it was a mistake to try to pressure Pyongyang into halting its nuclear missile program.    Putin, due to attend a summit of the BRICS nations in China next week, said the only way to de-escalate tensions was via talks, and Sergei Lavrov, his foreign minister, said Washington not Pyongyang should take the initiative on that.   It is essential to resolve the region s problems through direct dialogue involving all sides without advancing any preconditions (for such talks),  Putin, whose country shares a border with North Korea, wrote on the Kremlin s web site.    Provocations, pressure, and bellicose and offensive rhetoric is the road to nowhere.  The Russian leader, whose nuclear-capable bombers recently overflew the Korean Peninsula in a show of force, said the  situation had deteriorated so badly that it was now  balanced on the verge of a large-scale conflict.  Pyongyang has been working to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the United States and recently threatened to land missiles near the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam.  On Monday, North Korea, which sees joint war games between the United States and South Korea as preparations for invasion, raised the stakes by firing an intermediate-range missile over Japan.  In Russia s opinion the calculation that it is possible to halt North Korea s nuclear missile programs exclusively by putting pressure on Pyongyang is erroneous and futile,  Putin wrote. A road map formulated by Moscow and Beijing, which would involve North Korea halting its missile program in exchange for the United States and South Korea stopping large-scale war games, was a way to reduce tensions, wrote Putin. Lavrov, addressing students in Moscow, said he felt events were building towards a war which he said would cause large numbers of casualties in Japan and South Korea if it happened.  If we want to avoid a war the first step must be taken by the side that is the more intelligent and stronger,  said Lavrov, making clear he was referring to the United States.  He said Russia was working behind the scenes and that Moscow knew that Washington had a back channel to Pyongyang which he said he hoped would allow the two sides to de-escalate.

Summary: पुतिन ने उत्तर कोरिया की स्थिति को 'बड़े पैमाने पर संघर्ष' के कगार पर होने की चेतावनी दी


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump thinks a bipartisan healthcare bill aimed at stabilizing Obamacare by restoring subsidies to health insurers is a step in the right direction but he does not support the measure, the White House said on Wednesday. “We’ve said all along that we want something that just doesn’t bail out the insurance companies but actually provides relief for all Americans. And this bill doesn’t address that fact,” said White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders. “We think that this is a good step in the right direction. This president certainly supports Republicans and Democrats coming to work together, but it’s not a full approach and we need something to go a little bit further to get on board.”

Summary: ट्रंप ने अलेक्जेंडर-मुरे स्वास्थ्य सेवा विधेयक का समर्थन नहीं कियाः व्हाइट हाउस


WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Reuters) - A U.S. federal court on Tuesday set a March 15 deadline for North Carolina state lawmakers to redraw legislative districts found to be racially “gerrymandered,” and ordered a new round of elections by next November for the 28 seats at stake. In August, the same special three-judge panel ruled that nine state Senate districts and 19 state House districts, as carved out in a plan adopted by the Republican-controlled legislature in 2011, were unconstitutional. The panel had told North Carolina’s legislature to start revamping its political maps immediately, but left the existing boundaries intact for the Nov. 8 state elections, because of time constraints. “While special elections have costs, those costs pale in comparison to the injury caused by allowing citizens to continue to be represented by legislators elected pursuant to a racial gerrymander,” the panel wrote in its seven-page order on Tuesday. North Carolina has already appealed the August ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has yet to act. Republicans also vowed to appeal Tuesday’s ruling, handed down by two U.S. district judges and one circuit judge. The ruling is a “politically motivated” abuse of judicial authority, said state Senator Bob Rucho and Representative David Lewis, the Republican chairmen of the House and Senate redistricting committees. If upheld, the court order “is a gross overreach that blatantly disregards the constitutional guarantee for voters to duly elect their legislators to biennial terms,” they said. Last year, the Southern Coalition for Social Justice challenged North Carolina’s latest political maps, saying  legislative district lines were drawn in 2011 so as to dilute the state’s black vote and give Republicans an advantage. The three-judge panel that heard the case agreed, and Tuesday’s order, essentially an extension of its August opinion, was hailed by the North Carolina Democratic Party. A separate three-judge U.S. court panel ruled in a similar case a week ago that state assembly districts in Wisconsin, as redrawn by its Republican-led legislature, were unconstitutionally gerrymandered. Tuesday’s North Carolina ruling sets a deadline of March 15 for newly elected legislators to approve a redistricting plan that passes constitutional muster. It also requires the state to hold special primary and general elections in the late summer and fall of 2017 to fill those 28 House and Senate seats. Moreover, state lawmakers elected to any of the disputed General Assembly seats in 2016 will serve for just one year, instead of the normal two, the court ruled, a limit set for those elected next fall as well.

Summary: संघीय न्यायाधीशों ने उत्तरी कैरोलिना को विधायी जिलों को फिर से तैयार करने का आदेश दिया


HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong businessman and socialite David Tang, known for founding the eponymous Shanghai Tang fashion brand, has died at the age of 63. Tang, who split his time between the Asian financial hub of Hong Kong and London, was well known for his satirical sense of humor as a weekly columnist in the Financial Times weekend edition. Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, tweeted:  RIP Sir David Tang, businessman, philanthropist, networker supreme. He will be sorely missed as a friend and FT columnist.   Media reported he had battled liver cancer for some time.  Tang, the father of two children and husband of British-born Lucy Tang, moved to England at the age of 13 where he said he began boarding school without speaking a word of English. He set up his high-end tailor in 1994 and turned it into a global brand before Richemont took a controlling stake in 1998. Hong Kong-born Tang aimed to fuse east and west through his business ventures such as the members-only China Club in the former British colony and the China Tang restaurant at the Dorchester hotel in London. Tang, who was awarded a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE), was the grandson of Tang Shiu Kin, a famous philanthropist who founded the Kowloon Motor Bus company. Friends with celebrities including Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and the late Princess Diana, Tang was a constant feature in society magazines, known for his lively parties and exotic holidays in places such as Bhutan and the Sahara desert. An honorary consul of Cuba and the sole distributor of Cuban cigars in the Asia-Pacific, Tang had been planning a big party with close friends at the Dorchester after doctors gave him a month to live, British media reported in August.  It is not clear if the party took place. The Dorchester declined to comment.  Tang said in an interview with the Financial Times in 2010, that he would like to be remembered by a Hilaire Belloc quote:  When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.

Summary: हांगकांग के तेजतर्रार व्यवसायी डेविड टैंग का 63 वर्ष की आयु में निधन हो गया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump praised the people of Puerto Rico on Friday, calling them “wonderful” and praising their “unmatched spirit” as the U.S. territorial island struggles to recover from Hurricane Maria and he weathers criticism for his handling of the aftermath. “The wonderful people of Puerto Rico, with their unmatched spirit, know how bad things were before the [hurricanes],” Trump said on Twitter.  “I will always be with them!”

Summary: ट्रम्प ने कहा कि प्यूर्टो रिकान 'अद्भुत' हैं, उनमें 'बेजोड़ भावना' है


BEIRUT (Reuters) - A week after U.S. President Donald Trump delivered a blistering speech about Iran s Revolutionary Guards, the most powerful military and economic force in the Islamic Republic has shown it has no intention of curbing its activities in the Middle East. In defiance of other world powers, Trump chose in a speech last Friday not to certify that Tehran is complying with a pact to curb Iran s nuclear work and singled out the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), accusing Tehran of destabilizing the region. A senior IRGC commander said after the speech Trump was  acting crazy  and was following U.S. strategy of increasing  the shadow of war in the region . Iran s Shi ite militia proxies have made formidable military gains in recent months in Syria as well as Iraq, stretching from northern Iraq to a string of smaller cities and this week, after the Trump speech, re-captured the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.  In the short-run clearly Trump has increased the power and aggressiveness of the IRGC,  said Abbas Milani, the director of the Iranian Studies program at Stanford University.   The IRGC can t back down from a street fight. Their domestic and regional prestige is predicated on the fact that they fight a good fight and they don t back down.  The day after Trump spoke, the head of the Guards  al Quds overseas operations, Major General Qassem Soleimani, traveled to Iraq s Kurdistan region. He held talks about the escalating crisis between Kurdish authorities and the Iraqi government after a Kurdish independence referendum. The niece of the late Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, Alaa Talabani, told the al Hadath TV channel that Soleimani met with members of her family on Saturday. He had come to pay respects to Jalal, a former Iraqi president and founder of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party who died this month. Other Iraqi and Kurdish officials told Reuters Soleimani held meetings with Kurdish leaders to persuade them to retreat from Kirkuk ahead of the Iraqi army push into the city.  I don t deny that Mr. Qassem Soleimani gave us the advice to find a solution to Kirkuk,  she said.  He said Kirkuk should return to the (Iraqi) law and constitution and to have an agreement about Kirkuk and give up the intransigence about the referendum which was a decision not thought out.  Within days, Iran s mostly Shi ite allies in Baghdad launched a lightning assault, pushing Kurdish fighters out of disputed territories such as Kirkuk and consequently strengthening Iran s hand in Iraq. Commanders of the Kurdish forces, known as the Peshmerga, have accused Iran of orchestrating the Shi ite-led Iraqi central government s push into areas under their control, a charge senior Iranian officials have denied. A video posted by the Kurdish Rudaw channel online on Wednesday showed an Iraqi Shi ite militiaman loyal to Iran hanging a picture of Iran s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the Kirkuk governorate office. Iran, which has a large Kurdish minority, has reason to be wary of Iraqi Kurdish independence. It fears it might encourage its own Kurds, who have also pushed for separatism. After the independence vote in Iraqi Kurdistan on September 25, videos posted online showed hundreds of people celebrating in the streets in the Kurdish areas of Iran. FRONT-LINE PLAYER Regional analysts say the emergence of Iran in Iraq, Syria, Kurdistan and Lebanon, where it wields influence through its allied Shi ite Lebanese Hezbollah militia, means Tehran has become a front-line player in the region which Washington could not afford to ignore.  Trump s stupidity should not distract us from America s deceitfulness ... If the U.S. tears up the (nuclear) deal, we will shred it,  said Khamenei.  Americans are angry because the Islamic Republic of Iran has managed to thwart their plots in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and other countries in the region.    Speaking after Trump s speech, Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the Guards  aerospace division, said:  From the start of the Islamic revolution ... (presidents) have increased the shadow of war in the region ...  Dear brothers and sisters today Trump is acting crazy to gain concessions through this method.            The ramping up of tension could put the two countries on a collision course in the Gulf where clashes have only been narrowly avoided in recent months. Small boats from the Revolutionary Guards  navy veered close to U.S. naval vessels in the Gulf at least twice this year, prompting the U.S. military to fire warning shots and flares. In August, an unarmed Iranian drone came within 100 feet (31 meters) of a U.S. Navy warplane, risking a crash, according to a U.S. official. Some recent naval showdowns between Iran and the United States took place near the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway where up to 30 percent of global oil exports pass annually. During the presidential campaign last September, Trump vowed that any Iranian vessels that harassed the U.S. Navy in the Gulf would be  shot out of the water . The Guards could also target U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria through tens of thousands of loyal Shi ite militia fighters without directly acknowledging a role in any attacks.  The IRGC can claim ignorance of Shi ite militia attacks against the U.S. military,  said Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who has done extensive research on the Guards. In early October, an American soldier was killed in Iraq by an explosively formed penetrator, or EFP, a type of roadside bomb which was often used by Iran s Shi ite militia proxies in Iraq, according to the U.S. military.  This is the first time that we ve seen it used in this area,  U.S. Army Colonel Ryan Dillon, a coalition spokesman, said. Dillon said the U.S. military has not yet concluded who carried out the attack. Dozens of American soldiers in Iraq were killed and injured by EFPs used by militia groups linked to Iran after the 2003 invasion of Iraq by U.S. forces, according to the U.S. military. Asked about the threat posed by Shi ite militias allied with Iran in Iraq and Syria, particularly after Trump s speech, Dillon said:  We re always assessing the threats no matter where they come from. During certain announcements or certain dates or when certain events happen, we make proper adjustments.  Trump s new plan, observers say, will also weaken a group that had made progress in curbing the Guards  political and economic ambitions in recent years: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and the pragmatist politicians in his cabinet. Since becoming president in 2013, Rouhani and members of his cabinet repeatedly pushed back against the Guards  economic influence and involvement in political matters. Now, Rouhani s push against the Guards has been tempered because of the hardening in Trump s approach to Tehran, regional observers said.  What this has done is that even those who were critics are now defending the Revolutionary Guards,  said Nasser Hadian-Jazy, a political science professor at Tehran University.

Summary: ट्रम्प की चेतावनी के बावजूद मध्य पूर्व में ईरान के रक्षकों ने ताकत झोंकी


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has nominated Marine General Joseph Dunford to keep his post as his top military adviser for another two-year term. Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was first named to the post in 2015 under then-president Barack Obama. The Pentagon announced the decision in a statement on Friday.

Summary: ट्रंप ने पेंटागन के शीर्ष अधिकारी को एक और कार्यकाल के लिए बनाए रखने का फैसला किया


WELLINGTON (Reuters) - New Zealand s major party leaders met with their caucuses on Tuesday, preparing to kick off talks on forming the next government with a nationalist party that holds the balance of power after an inconclusive weekend election. The ruling National Party won the most seats in Saturday s general election, but failed to secure enough to form a government, leaving the New Zealand First Party in the position of kingmaker. Deputy leaders of both the ruling National and opposition Labour parties said they would be willing to give up the role of deputy prime minister to win the backing of Winston Peters, who  leads New Zealand First. But the Labour Party, whose support spiked after Jacinda Ardern became leader last month, also has a chance to govern in New Zealand s proportional representation system, if it can woo Peters into a coalition along with the Green Party. Ardern said she had  every chance  to become the country s youngest prime minister in modern history, adding that her team had contacted that of Peters, a veteran politician who has served in National and Labour governments.  We are willing and available when he is ready,  Ardern, 37, told reporters in Wellington.   I respect the time that Mr. Peters will need to talk with his party.  Asked about possible sticking points in talks, she said budget responsibility rules would apply in any government Labour led.   Both National and Labour are expected to stick to fiscal prudence, but to differ on monetary policy, trade and immigration. Labour wants to cut immigration and renegotiate some trade deals that could hurt two key sources of growth. It wants to add employment to the central bank s inflation-targeting mandate, which could make monetary policy more stimulatory, and there is some concern about New Zealand First s preference for more central bank intervention in the currency market. The political uncertainty weighed on the New Zealand dollar , which was down 0.32 percent at $0.7243, after posting its biggest daily drop in more than four months on Monday. Forming a coalition government could take weeks, Prime Minister Bill English has said, though he hoped talks would be constructive, even if expected to be tense. English has courted Peters since election night, when he acknowledged his  strong performance , saying voters had given him a role in the new government s formation.  He understands his role and the role here is, now that we ve had an election where the people have spoken... then it s up to the political party leaders to form the kind of government indicated by the election,  English told media. The National Party secured 58 seats, ahead of the 52 won by the Green Party and Labour in Saturday s election, leaving both still in need of NZ First s nine seats to reach the tally of 61 required to form a government. A final tally of election results is due on Oct. 7, when  special votes , which constitute 15 percent of the total and include overseas votes, are released. English remains prime minister in the interim.

Summary: न्यूजीलैंड पार्टी के नेताओं ने बातचीत शुरू करने के लिए कॉकस से मुलाकात की


KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - A Malaysian state s royal council on Thursday urged authorities to investigate former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad for sedition over his alleged insult to those who trace descent from the southeast Asian region s ancient Bugis seafaring community. Over the past few weeks, Mahathir, 93, has been sharply criticized for comments at an opposition rally last month where he is reported to have described Prime Minister Najib Razak as a  Bugis pirate . Mahathir s remarks about his former protege came in the context of alleged mismanagement of billions of dollars by state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), in which Najib has denied all wrongdoing.  An investigation and legal action must be taken against Dr Mahathir under the Sedition Act, 1948, or any related laws,  the royal council of the western state of Selangor said in a statement issued by its secretary, Hanafisah Jais. Mahathir s comments at the rally were  excessive , it added, and could spark hatred for those of Bugis ethnicity, besides which the speech  indirectly insults  the Bugis lineage of the sultanate of Selangor. Selangor Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah urged all parties, particularly politicians, to avoid use of racial issues for political capital as this could disrupt harmony and unity, the statement said. The police were not immediately available for comment. Mahathir s office did not immediately respond to a Reuters  request for comment. The former prime minister last month said his criticism targeted only those of Bugis ancestry who stole the people s money, news reports have said. A body representing Malaysia s Bugis community demanded that Mahathir apologize and retract his statement, state news agency Bernama said last month. Thousands of Malaysians rallied on Oct. 14 in the finale of a two-month-long opposition roadshow aimed at convincing majority Malay Muslim voters in rural battleground areas that Malaysia has suffered from Najib s handling of 1MDB. Najib has so far been able to weather the scandal, consolidating power by clamping down on dissenters and curbing domestic media and activists, even as he faces a fierce challenge from Mahathir, who was prime minister for 22 years. But Najib s popularity took a hit from persistent bad press linked to 1MDB, especially after the U.S. Department of Justice filed civil suits to recover more than $1.7 billion alleged to have been misappropriated from the 1MDB fund. Originally seafarers who hailed from Indonesia, the Bugis community established sultanates on the Malaysian peninsula. Their Malaysian descendants are considered to be part of the Malay majority, that makes up more than half of Malaysia s population of nearly 33 million.

Summary: मलेशियाई राज्य की शाही परिषद ने पूर्व नेता महातिर की राजद्रोह जांच का आग्रह किया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said he won assurances of greater U.S. support in fighting Islamic State militants in talks on Monday with President Donald Trump and top advisers, but cautioned that military might alone would not be sufficient. Abadi’s remarks followed his first face-to-face meeting at the White House with Trump, who took office on Jan. 20 pledging a new strategy to defeat the hardline militant group that seized large swaths of Iraq and Syria in 2014. Even before Trump took office, Iraqi forces recaptured a string of major cities from Islamic State, shrank the militant group’s finances and significantly stemmed the flow of foreign fighters, all with the support of U.S.-led coalition air strikes and military advisers.  Abadi said Trump appeared more enthusiastic about battling Islamist extremists than Barack Obama’s administration had been. “I think they’re prepared to do more to fight terrorism and be more engaged,” Abadi told a forum in Washington hours after his meeting with Trump, adding he had been told U.S. “support will not only continue but will accelerate.”   “But of course we have to be careful here,” Abadi said. “We are not talking about military confrontation as such. Committing troops is one thing, while fighting terrorism is another thing.”  Abadi, who leads the Shi’ite majority government in Baghdad, said it would be crucial to win over the local population in Sunni-dominated Mosul to achieve lasting peace. A White House statement about the meeting said both Trump and Abadi agreed that “terrorism cannot be defeated by military might alone,” and the two leaders called for deepening commercial ties, including in the energy sector. At the forum, Abadi called for more financial contributions from the international community. “We (would) love to see more funds so that we can quickly (regain) prosperity and stabilization in these areas,” he said. Abadi spoke as Iraqi forces made steady progress in seizing back Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, from Islamic State, which officials expect will become a more classic insurgency once it loses its last major strongholds. In a sign of the threat, a car bomb killed at least 23 people and wounded more than 45 in a mainly Shi’ite southern district, police and medical sources said. There was no claim of responsibility, but Islamic State has carried out similar attacks in Baghdad and other cities as its hold on Mosul weakens.  Earlier in the day, as the two men met, Trump told Abadi that he knew his forces were fighting hard. “It’s not an easy job,” Trump said. “It’s a very tough job. Your soldiers are fighting hard. I know Mosul is moving along. ... We will figure something out. “Our main thrust is we have to get rid of ISIS. We’re going to get rid of ISIS. It will happen. It’s happening right now,” Trump added, using an acronym for Islamic State. Asked whether he had seen the Trump administration’s plan to wipe out Islamic State, Abadi said: “I haven’t seen a full plan. I know there is a plan. I haven’t seen it.” Abadi is in Washington this week ahead of a gathering of world leaders of a coalition fighting Islamic State.  In many ways, his visit comes at a high point for him after successfully appealing to Trump to remove Iraq from a list of countries included in a revamped travel ban. Trump decided this month’s revised order temporarily banning the entry of travelers from several Muslim-majority nations would not include Iraq because of its cooperation with the United States. Both the initial Jan. 27 travel ban and the revised version have been blocked by federal courts. Detractors argue the ban discriminated against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of religious freedom. Trump says the measure is necessary for national security to protect the country from terrorist attacks. “I thank you for removing Iraq from the presidential order ... this was a positive response to the Iraqi request that betters the relationship with Iraq and the value of Iraq as far as Iraqi-American relations,” Abadi told Trump.

Summary: इराक के अबादी का कहना है कि उन्होंने अधिक अमेरिकी समर्थन का ट्रम्प का आश्वासन जीता है


ROME (Reuters) - Italy s anti-establishment 5-Star Movement told French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday that it does not represent a threat to the European Union, and sought to shrug off the label  populist . Leader Luigi Di Maio, whose party tops polls ahead of a national election due early next year, wrote an open letter to Macron after the French leader reportedly expressed concern about anti-system forces in Italy.  I am sure that when we get to know each other better, you will realize that our movement is not only not a threat, but is cultivating the best solutions for many of Europe s problems,  Di Maio said in the letter published on the 5-Star movement s blog.   Italian media reported this week that Macron had told former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi he was worried about the rise of 5-Star and the Northern League, which is close to France s National Front.  Allied to Britain s United Kingdom Independence Party in the European Parliament, 5-Star is trying to distance itself from anti-immigrant, Eurosceptic parties in the rest of the bloc. Di Maio, a sober 31 year-old who has taken over leadership of the movement founded by comedian Beppe Grillo, said 5-Star shared with Macron the desire to  rebuild  Europe.  They lazily call us populist without knowing what this means, when in reality we are ... close to the people, who want pay-back and a role in changing our country,  he said.  Di Maio made no mention of a referendum on Italy s use of the euro which 5-Star originally pledged when it burst onto the political scene in 2013, but has since backed away from. Regarding EU budget rules, Di Maio said that 5-Star s point of view was  very close  to that of France, which he said had let its budget deficit rise to accommodate spending on welfare and other investments. In January, 5-Star s European parliamentarians tried and failed to split from UKIP, which successfully campaigned for Britain to leave the EU. 5-Star eventually gave up a leading role in the group.

Summary: इटली के 5-स्टार ने फ्रांस के मैक्रों आंदोलन को यूरोपीय संघ के लिए कोई खतरा नहीं बताया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Justice threatened on Friday to cut some funding to California as well as eight cities and counties across the United States, escalating a Trump administration crackdown on so-called sanctuary cities that do not cooperate with federal immigration authorities. President Donald Trump has vowed to strip federal funds from dozens of state and local governments that do not fully cooperate with U.S. immigration agents, arguing they endanger public safety when they decline to hand over for deportation illegal immigrants who are arrested for crimes.  “Sanctuary cities” in general offer safe harbor to illegal immigrants and often do not use municipal funds or resources to advance the enforcement of federal immigration laws.  Many of these localities say they do not have the funding or space to hold immigrants until federal agents can take custody of them.   Those threatened were: the state of California; New York City; Chicago; Philadelphia; Clark County, Nevada; New Orleans; Miami-Dade County, Florida; and Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. Cook County, Illinois, also received a warning, even though it did not get money from the Justice Department last year. The jurisdictions have until June 30 to provide evidence to the federal government that they are not violating any laws. At stake is roughly $29 million in law enforcement aid under the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program, which helps local governments pay for everything from forensics labs to drug courts. The grants in question are among the largest handed out under the program, collectively amounting to 11 percent of the $256 million distributed in the last fiscal year.  In a statement, the Justice Department singled out Chicago and New York as two cities that are “crumbling under the weight of illegal immigration and violent crime,” even though New York City is experiencing its lowest crime levels in decades and experts say Chicago’s recent spike in violent crime has little to do with illegal immigration.     Several state and local officials responded with defiance to the threat.  “New York is the safest big city in the country, with crime at record lows in large part because we have policies in place to encourage cooperation between NYPD and immigrant communities,” said Seth Stein, a spokesman for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.  In California, the state Senate approved a bill earlier this month to curb cooperation between police agencies and federal agents seeking to deport illegal immigrants. The measure is now in the state Assembly. “It has become abundantly clear that Attorney General (Jeff) Sessions and the Trump administration are basing their law enforcement policies on principles of white supremacy - not American values,” California Senate President Pro Tempore Kevin de León, a Democrat, said in a statement on Friday.  A spokeswoman for the California Board of State and Community Corrections said some of the federal funding in question went to local communities after emergencies, including San Bernardino after a mass shooting there in 2015. Officials in Philadelphia, Milwaukee County and Cook County said they believed they were complying with immigration laws.  “Milwaukee County has its challenges but they are not caused by illegal immigration. My far greater concern is the proactive dissemination of misinformation, fear, and intolerance,” said Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele. The Fraternal Order of Police, the largest police union, told Trump in a meeting last month that they were concerned the cuts could threaten public safety.

Summary: वाशिंगटन ने कैलिफोर्निया और अन्य 'अभयारण्य' क्षेत्रों के वित्तपोषण में कटौती की धमकी दी


MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Tuesday it had dropped accusations against CNN International of violating Russian media law and the U.S. channel could continue broadcasting in Russia. The head of broadcasting regulator Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov, said the issue was resolved after CNN agreed to rectify details of its Russian license shown onscreen during broadcasts, the Interfax news agency reported. He gave no details. CNN said it did not plan to make any comment on the matter. The regulator had raised the accusations in September, a day after the Russian foreign ministry accused Washington of putting unwarranted pressure on the U.S operations of Kremlin-backed media outlet RT.  Zharov at the time gave no detail of the exact nature of the dispute; but he said when the accusations were raised that Russia was not motivated by any political considerations.  Claims against CNN have been dropped, the channel will continue working in Russia, but Roskomnadzor will continue monitoring the compliance of the American company s activities with Russia s legislation,  Interfax cited Zharov as saying. President Vladimir Putin told a Security Council meeting last month that Russian media outlets working abroad were facing  growing and unacceptable pressure .

Summary: मास्को ने रूस में सी. एन. एन. अंतर्राष्ट्रीय प्रसारण को हरी झंडी दी


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has begun paying his own legal bills related to the Russia investigation and will no longer cover the costs using political donations to his re-election campaign or the Republican Party, his attorneys confirmed on Friday. Trump defense lawyer John Dowd said that following payments by the Republican National Committee, the president began paying the bills and now wants to make the party “even.” The RNC confirmed it is no longer paying the bills. The expenses cover personal lawyers representing Trump in special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s probe of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in last year’s election. Moscow has denied meddling in the election, and Trump has denied any collusion. The investigation has hounded Trump’s presidency. Mueller already has secured an indictment of Trump’s former campaign chief and another aide, while a third former adviser pleaded guilty. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has offered shifting accounts of his Russia contacts while he was a campaign adviser, including with Moscow’s former ambassador to the United States, Sergei Kislyak, and his knowledge of contacts between the campaign and Russian intermediaries. But Sessions made light of the investigation during a speech on Friday before a conservative lawyers’ group. “Is Ambassador Kislyak in the room? Before I get started here, any Russians?” Sessions said, prompting applause and laughter from the crowd at the Federalist Society event. “Anybody been to Russia? Got a cousin in Russia or something?” Special White House counsel Ty Cobb said the administration was working with others to establish a legal fund for current and former staffers. Dowd said White House counsel Don McGahn and campaign lawyer Ben Ginsberg of Jones Day are working to structure that fund, which would be subject to rules that prohibit staff from receiving gifts or pro bono legal service. The president is exempt from those rules, Dowd said. “The geniuses are working on it,” Dowd said. “If it passes muster with the tax lawyers and accountants, then it has to pass muster with the Office of Government Ethics.”  During former President Bill Clinton’s administration, private funds were raised to cover Clinton’s legal expenses related to the Whitewater investigation. Under former President George W. Bush, a legal fund was set up to help former Bush staffer Lewis “Scooter” Libby, but only after he had left White House employment. In August, Reuters first reported that the RNC was paying Trump’s legal bills, which amounted to more than $230,000 that month. The payments were made to Trump’s outside legal team, which includes Dowd.  Additionally, Trump’s re-election campaign paid more than $300,000 this year in bills to lawyers representing his son, Donald Trump Jr., according to public disclosures. The campaign did not respond to a request for comment on whether it will continue to pay for Trump Jr’s legal expenses.  The Federal Election Commission allows use of private campaign funds to pay legal bills arising from being a candidate or elected official.  While previous presidential campaigns have used these funds to pay for routine legal matters such as ballot access disputes and compliance requirements, Trump is the first president in the modern campaign finance era to use such funds on the costs of responding to a criminal probe, said election law experts.

Summary: रूस की जांच पर ट्रंप ने अपने कानूनी बिलों का भुगतान करना शुरू कर दियाः वकील