SYDNEY (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Thursday he had told State Department officials to fully cooperate with President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration. After Trump’s stunning upset of the heavily favored Hillary Clinton, Democratic President Barack Obama and leading figures in the Republican Party who had struggled to make peace with Trump all vowed to move past the ugliness of an angry campaign to seek common ground. Kerry said State Department staff must not lose sight of the important issues facing the United States. “One of the beautiful things of democracy - and we particularly pride ourselves in the United States - is that we have this amazing peaceful transfer of power,” Kerry told reporters in Christchurch, New Zealand.  “And we will do everything in our power, as I have instructed our team, to work with the incoming administration as fully and openly as possible, to be as helpful as possible, so that the transfer of power will be as smooth as it possibly can without missing a beat on the important issues before us.” Kerry is in New Zealand en route to Antarctica. Last month 24 countries, which included the United States, and the European Union agreed to create the world’s largest marine park in the Antarctic Ocean.

Summary: केरी ने विदेश विभाग से अमेरिका के निर्वाचित राष्ट्रपति ट्रम्प के साथ सहयोग करने को कहा


WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Reuters) - Civil rights groups and churches opposed to sweeping changes to North Carolina’s election rules said on Tuesday they would ask an appeals court for a reversal after a federal judge upheld provisions they argue will suppress minority votes at the polls in November. The ruling late on Monday was highly anticipated in a presidential election year in a state that had close results for the White House in 2008 and 2012, and it received praise from the voting law’s Republican backers. U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder in Winston-Salem said the state could require voters to show approved photo identification at the polls, one of a number of provisions in the law that challengers have said targets groups of people who typically support Democratic candidates. Schroeder, who was appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush, also upheld provisions that eliminated a week of early voting, ended same-day registration and banned provisional ballots cast outside the correct precinct from being counted. Lawyers for groups including churches, the North Carolina chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday filed a notice of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. They said they were confident they would prevail.  “If this decision remained in effect, the impact on the November election could be devastating,” said Penda Hair of the Advancement Project civil rights organization, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.  The U.S. Justice Department, which also challenged the North Carolina law, said it was evaluating its options for moving forward. “We’re disappointed in the ruling,” the department said in a statement. The Republican chairmen of the North Carolina legislature’s elections oversight committee criticized the legal challenges as an abuse of the court system. “We are glad the court recognized the law provides all voters an equal opportunity to vote,” Representative David Lewis and Senator Bob Rucho said in a statement. Backers of the law said the voter ID provision would guard against fraud, though the plaintiffs in the case said there was little evidence of such fraud at the polls.   Schroeder found the Republican-controlled legislature did not act with discriminatory intent when it overhauled the state’s voting rules in 2013. The revisions were made soon after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that North Carolina and other states with a history of discrimination no longer needed federal approval for voting law changes affecting minorities. The judge also said the plaintiffs had not established that African Americans or Hispanics had less opportunity to participate in the political process than other people as a result of the law.

Summary: मानवाधिकार समूहों ने उत्तरी कैरोलिना मतदाता पहचान पत्र कानून को बरकरार रखने के फैसले की अपील की


LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Democrat Hillary Clinton said on a late-night television show on Monday that sometimes she feels she is in an “alternative universe” in the U.S. presidential race against Republican Donald Trump. “I do feel sometimes like this campaign has entered into an alternative universe,” Clinton said on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live. “I have to step into the alternative reality, answer questions about am I alive, how much longer will I be alive.” Clinton was for the first time responding to allegations made by Trump and some of his backers that she is suffering health problems that could be problematic in the White House should she win the Nov. 8 election. Both Clinton and Trump have released notes from doctors declaring them physically fit for the presidency. Kimmel asked Clinton to open a jar of pickles as a test of her strength. She did so successfully. “This has become one of their themes. Take my pulse while I’m talking to you – make sure I’m alive,” Clinton said to Kimmel of the health rumors. Clinton said that sometimes Trump’s remarks about her – such as a recent charge that President Barack Obama and Clinton co-founded the Islamic State, which he later said was sarcasm – go beyond personal attacks and become harmful to U.S. national security. “There’s enough evidence now that when Trump talks the way he talks it actually helps the terrorists,” Clinton said. “I think it’s crazy, but I think it’s also harmful.” Clinton said she had begun preparing for the three presidential debates scheduled in September and October. “I want to take it seriously,” Clinton said. “But you’ve got to be prepared for, like wacky stuff that comes at you and I am drawing on my experience in elementary school.” Clinton brushed off the possible release of an additional 14,900 emails that the FBI found when investigating her use of a private email server as secretary of state. “My emails are so boring,” Clinton said. “What’s a few more?” The U.S. State Department has already reviewed some 30,068 emails from her 2009-2013 tenure and released most of them, amounting to some 55,000 pages.

Summary: क्लिंटन ने अमेरिकी राष्ट्रपति चुनाव को 'वैकल्पिक वास्तविकता' बताया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama called incoming Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday to congratulate him on his election win, stressing that their countries’ alliance was based on a commitment to human rights and the rule of law, the White House said. U.S. officials have signaled that Washington is ready to work with Duterte despite allegations of human rights abuses in the city he led as mayor for over two decades. Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, told a Washington seminar earlier on Tuesday that the U.S. administration was aware there was some “controversy” surrounding Duterte and “statements that drew attention in the past,” but he did not elaborate. Obama offered his congratulations to Duterte as the “presumptive president-elect.” He won the largest share of the votes in a May 9 presidential election, according to an unofficial count by a poll watchdog, although the official result has yet to be confirmed. Obama “highlighted the enduring values that underpin our thriving alliance ... and the longstanding ties between our two peoples, including our shared commitments to democracy, human rights, rule of law, and inclusive economic growth,” the White House said. Washington hoped “to build on progress made with the last administration” in the Philippines, Rhodes said. “This is a new government and we’ll want to hear from them directly what their priorities are,” he said when asked about the election, adding that Washington wanted to see continued efforts to respect the rule of law and combat corruption. Duterte has been criticized for allowing a spree of vigilante killings under his administration in Davao city, and critics fear he could let them happen on a larger scale as president. He has denied ordering any of the killings, but has not condemned them. Washington has steered clear of the controversy, however, which analysts say reflects the reality of U.S. national security interests given China’s increasingly assertive stance in Asia and maritime disputes in the South China Sea. Duterte’s vows to restore law and order resonated with voters, but his incendiary rhetoric and advocacy of extrajudicial killings to stamp out crime and drugs have alarmed many people. Rhodes noted U.S. support for Manila efforts to resolve its territorial dispute with China in the South China Sea through international arbitration, and a recent deal allowing a greater U.S. military presence in the Philippines.  “We believe that now as much as ever it’s important that the U.S. and Philippines are seen working together,” he said. The U.S. stance on Duterte could echo its approach toward India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. At one point, Modi was unable to obtain a U.S. visa because of concerns about sectarian riots in the state of Gujarat when he was chief minister, but was later invited to the White House when he became prime minister.

Summary: ओबामा ने फिलीपींस के निर्वाचित राष्ट्रपति से बात की, मानवाधिकारों पर जोर दिया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department said on Sunday it was watching developments in the disputed region of Kirkuk and was  very concerned  about reports of a confrontation, after Iraqi government forces clashed with Kurdish Peshmerga.  We are monitoring the situation in Kirkuk closely and are very concerned by reports of a confrontation,  a State Department official said.  We are engaged with all parties in Iraq to de-escalate tension.  The Iraqi government earlier said its forces took control of  vast areas  in the Kirkuk region, including oilfields west of the city, in the early hours of Monday, Iraqi state TV said. However the Kurdistan Regional Government disputed the assertions.

Summary: अमेरिकी विदेश विभाग ने किर्कुक टकराव की रिपोर्टों के बारे में 'बहुत चिंतित' कहा


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Billionaires Charles and David Koch, the Republican brothers who are a driving force behind conservative politics and election financing, are launching a new group to target social issues such as poverty and education, USA Today reported on Friday.  Organizers said the goal is to raise $15 million this year for the group, which aims to partner with private organizations to tackle problems such as poverty, gang violence and repeat criminal offenders through grants or other investments, the newspaper said. The five-person group, called Stand Together, plans to reveal more details about its plans at an annual gathering near Palm Springs, California, of hundreds of Koch donors that is scheduled to open on Saturday, USA Today said, citing interviews with the group’s leaders. It is not clear how much of their personal funds the brothers will give the social issues group, the newspaper said. Representatives for the Kochs could not be immediately reached to comment on the initiative. Evan Feinberg, the group’s executive director, on Friday tweeted that its website stand-together.org had officially launched. The Kochs are among the best-known conservative donors and have spent millions to influence U.S. elections, using their wealth from Koch Industries Inc, a U.S. conglomerate that is the nation’s second-largest private company, and running their nonprofit political group Americans for Prosperity.  While their efforts to create an initiative aimed at social issues has been in the works for months, its formal launch comes amid active campaigning in a crowded field ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election. While so far issues such as immigration and security have dominated the presidential campaign, other domestic issues could eventually come to the forefront.  The libertarian-leaning brothers have not endorsed a candidate among the 12 Republicans seeking the party’s nomination. According to USA Today, their latest nonprofit could use its funding in a variety of ways, from offering scholarships to providing support to other nonprofit groups.  (Reporting by Washington Newsroom; Editing by Phil Berlowitz) SAP is the sponsor of this coverage which is independently produced by the staff of Reuters News Agency.

Summary: अरबपति कोच की जोड़ी ने नए समूह के साथ शिक्षा और अपराध को निशाना बनायाः यूएसए टुडे


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bill to ease restrictions on energy development on U.S. tribal lands has a good chance of passing the Republican-controlled Congress this year, after several failed attempts since 2013, the chair of the Senate Indian affairs committee said. Many Republican lawmakers, along with President Donald Trump, have expressed support for more oil drilling, coal mining and other energy projects on Native American reservations, which are overseen by the federal government. Several additional layers of regulatory bureaucracy have slowed those efforts. “I think we will be able to get the bill through the House this go around,” Republican Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota, who authored the bill with seven other Republican Senators, said in a recent interview with Reuters.  He said he believed the bill also had the support of “a broad spectrum of tribes across the country” and would “empower” Native Americans. The bill, dubbed the Tribal Energy Development and Self Determination Act, would authorize tribes to conduct their own energy resource appraisals. It would streamline the permitting process for drilling and mining and provide incentives for tribes to enter into joint-venture agreements with private companies. Former President Barack Obama had opposed a previous House version of the bill in 2015 because it would have exempted tribes from some federal environmental regulations. Other versions were blocked after being rolled into broader bills that were defeated. Tribal lands cover just 2 percent of the nation’s surface but by some estimates contain as much as a fifth of all remaining U.S. oil and gas reserves. But clearing regulatory hurdles for a single project on tribal lands can take as many as 50 steps, compared to a half dozen on private property, according to Reuters interviews conducted in January with tribal leaders, lawyers, oil company executives and federal regulators. Hoeven and Montana Republican Senator Steve Daines joined around a dozen representatives of mineral-rich tribes for a meeting with White House officials last week to discuss ways to reduce those barriers. Tribal participants at the meeting included representatives of the Crow Agency of Montana, the Three Affiliated Tribes of North Dakota, the Navajo Nation and the Southern Ute Indian tribe of Colorado - all tribes that currently produce oil, gas or coal. “We are just trying to amplify our opportunities, change the narrative of Indian country, and establish access to the administration,” said C.J. Stewart, a representative of the Crow.

Summary: अमेरिकी सांसदों ने जनजातीय भूमि के लिए कमजोर ऊर्जा विकास नियमों की मांग की


NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he believed  we really have a chance  to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Trump has faced deep skepticism at home and abroad over the chances for him to achieve any quick breakthrough, not least because his administration has yet to articulate a strategy for restarting a moribund peace process. Trump has described peace between Israelis and Palestinians as  the ultimate deal.   Peace between the Palestinians and Israel would be a fantastic achievement, and we are giving it an absolute go. I think there s a good chance that it could happen. Most people would say  there s no chance whatsoever,  Trump said as he began a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York ahead of the U.N. General Assembly s meeting.  I think Israel would like to see it. I think the Palestinians would like to see it. I can tell you the Trump administration would like to see it. So we re working very hard on it; we ll see what happens. Historically, people say it can t happen. I say it can happen.  Trump is also to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas later this week.

Summary: मध्य-पूर्व में शांति स्थापित करने के लिए 'पूर्ण प्रयास' करना होगाः ट्रम्प


LIMA (Reuters) - Peru s opposition-ruled Congress voted 55-21 late on Thursday to pass legislation that expands a raft of new financial restrictions to the local partners of scandal-plagued Brazilian builder Odebrecht. If signed by President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, the law would deliver a fresh blow to Peru s biggest construction group, Grana y Montero, just as the company s shares have been climbing back from a sharp drop after partner Odebrecht admitted to a decade-long bribery scheme last year. Supporters of the bill said Odebrecht s partners might have had a hand in the graft and must be included in anti-corruption rules passed early this year that restrict the transfer of company assets abroad until civil reparations have been paid. The legislation would also seize companies   ill-gotten gains  made from government contracts. Grana declined to comment on the legislation. The company has repeatedly denied knowing about or being involved in Odebrecht s bribes and said last week that a 6-month internal probe it commissioned turned up no evidence of wrongdoing. Lawmakers in Kuczynski s party voted against the bill and his government will likely send it back to Congress saying it violates the presumption of innocence, a former deputy justice minister in Kuczynski s government, Edgar Carpio, told Reuters. The justice ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The bill taps growing impatience in Peru with criminal investigations related to Odebrecht that have yet to yield any convictions or broaden to target additional companies.  It s been a year and nothing,  opposition lawmaker Victor Andres Belaunde said.  We re disappointed with the lack of courage of many who don t want to confront corruption.  Right-wing opposition party Popular Force, which dominates Congress, has slammed Kuczynski s government and the attorney general s office as soft on graft. Opposition lawmakers have demanded Kuczynski face questioning in Congress about what he knew about Odebrecht s bribes when he was part of the cabinet of former president Alejandro Toledo, whom prosecutors allege took $20 million from the company in exchange for lucrative highway contracts. Grana partnered with Odebrecht on two of the highway contracts and a $5 billion natural gas pipeline project that was canceled this year as the bribery scandal unfolded. Kuczynski has denied wrongdoing and has answered lawmakers  questions about his knowledge of Odebrecht in writing, but he has said he would not do so in a congressional commission because it would be a  circus.

Summary: पेरू की कांग्रेस ने ओडेब्रेक्ट के सहयोगियों को निशाना बनाने के लिए कानून पारित किया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump waded into politically risky territory this week when he accused Democrat Hillary Clinton of exploiting her gender to win votes and said she would have little support if she were not a woman. As Trump and Clinton, fresh off big wins in five Northeastern state primaries on Tuesday, circled each other for a potential matchup in the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election, his comments portended what could be an unusually nasty campaign. Like other controversial remarks during his White House campaign, Trump’s comments drew criticism from a wide spectrum but also reinforced his image - which has been attractive to some supporters - for plain talk that defies political norms. “The only thing she’s got going is the fact that she’s a woman,” Trump, 69, said on Thursday on NBC’s “Today” show, refusing to back down from targeting Clinton, 68, for what he called “playing the woman’s card.”     Trump’s remarks, reaching into an area of gender attacks that is conventionally seen as off-limits, energized Democrats. “Keep talking, Donald Trump,” Democratic Committee National Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz told CNN on Wednesday. “Every single day when Donald Trump opens his mouth, he does more to alienate women.” Trump, unfazed by the criticism, told supporters in Evansville, Indiana, that he has gotten a bad rap. “Nobody cherishes and nobody respects women more than Donald Trump,” he said after being introduced by famed former Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight. “I will be so much better to women than Hillary Clinton.” Trump, who can be as free with his personal attacks on men,  has consistently polled poorly with women. Democrats and Republicans both accuse Trump of sexism over verbal insults lobbed at Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and former Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina. On Wednesday, Trump’s closest Republican rival, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, named Fiorina, 61, as his running mate should he win the party’s nomination, a move that could help him draw women’s support. “Donald has a problem with strong women,” Cruz, 45, told reporters in Fort Wayne, Indiana, before a rally. “This is not subtle, it’s not complicated.” U.S. Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, who fended off a 2010 Senate challenge from Fiorina, said Trump is insulting all women when he attacks Clinton and other prominent women, such as Kelly, in this way. “Either Trump has spent too much time in his Trump Tower and has no clue about what’s happening, or he truly dislikes women and are quite threatened by them,” Boxer said on MSNBC. But Trump said women would support his positions on security and jobs. U.S. Representative Renee Ellmers, a Republican who has endorsed him, said she believed Trump could overcome his unpopularity with women voters with his straight talk. “To me, this is breaking all the rules, this is going against any of the typical history books and elections of the past,” she said. Trump’s top aide and other supporters said focusing on Clinton’s gender was part of Trump’s emerging strategy for the general election and that he had no intention of hewing to traditional rules. “When he is attacked, he will respond,” Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, told Reuters. “The campaign is going to proceed under the mantra, which we’ve had in this campaign from Day One, which is: Let Mr. Trump be Mr. Trump.” A Reuters/Ipsos poll this month showed a big gender gap in opinions about Trump. About two-thirds of women had an unfavorable view of the billionaire businessman and former reality TV star, while 54 percent of men had a negative view of him. In her political career, Clinton has sometimes benefited from missteps by male candidates. Her 2000 U.S. Senate rival, New York Republican Rick Lazio, was seen as a bully when he stepped close to her on stage during a debate to demand she sign a pledge.  Early in her first presidential campaign in 2008, Clinton accused her male opponents of “piling on” and said that would prompt more women to support her. Then-Senator Barack Obama’s comments during a debate in New Hampshire that year that she was “likable enough” were seen by some as patronizing, and as helping her win the state’s primary. If Trump wins the nomination, his willingness to raise Clinton’s gender and other issues could make for one of the most contentious general election campaigns in recent history. “I don’t think there’s going to be any taboos with Donald Trump,” said James Pethokoukis, a scholar with the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “He’s not going to treat her with any sort of kid gloves.” Retired U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, weighed in on the presidential race during a talk at Stanford University on Wednesday, according to the student newspaper, saying he could vote for his golfing and “texting buddy” Trump but harshly criticizing Cruz. “Lucifer in the flesh,” Boehner said of Cruz, who is a staunch fiscal conservative and who angered many of his  colleagues in Congress by leading a government shutdown in 2013. “I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life,” Boehner said. Cruz said Boehner was allowing “his inner Trump” to come out. “What made John Boehner mad is that I led a movement of the people to hold Washington accountable,” Cruz told reporters.

Summary: लिंग के मुद्दे पर क्लिंटन पर भड़के ट्रम्प, महिलाओं की प्रतिक्रिया का जोखिम उठाया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has begun returning to Congress copies of a voluminous 2014 report describing the CIA’s harsh detention and interrogation programs, U.S. officials said on Friday. The Trump administration’s move means it could be more difficult for the full, 6,700-page report to be made public, because documents held by Congress are exempt from laws requiring government records to eventually be made public. The White House made the move in response to requests by Sen. Richard Burr, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s current Republican chairman, officials said. In a statement emailed to Reuters, Burr said: “I have directed my staff to retrieve copies of the Congressional study that remain with the Executive Branch agencies and, as the Committee does with all classified and compartmented information, will enact the necessary measures to protect the sensitive sources and methods contained within the report.” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Democrat who chaired the committee when the report was produced, had asked that it be distributed to multiple executive branch agencies, a move designed to make it eventually releasable to the public under the Freedom of Information Act law. Feinstein said in a statement that she was “concerned and disappointed” that Burr requested that the document be returned, calling it a departure from the committee’s normal bipartisan nature. “No senator, chairman or not, has the authority to erase history. I believe that is the intent of the chairman in this case,” she said.  Sen Mark Warner, who succeeded Feinstein as the committee’s top Democrat, said in a Twitter post he was “disappointed” with Burr’s decision, and that the report “must be preserved so we can learn from past mistakes & ensure that abuses are never repeated.” A declassified executive summary of the report was made public in December 2014. It concluded that the CIA’s interrogation programs, using techniques such as waterboarding that most observers consider torture, were more brutal and less effective than the CIA had told policymakers. The report said that not a single terrorist attack was foiled as a result of the use of harsh interrogation techniques. The American Civil Liberties Union had filed litigation to have the full report released. But U.S. courts ruled that because the document was created by Congress, it was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. At least one copy of the report, however, will not be returned to the committee. That’s because a copy has been preserved in former President Barack Obama’s presidential archive, according to a Dec. 9, 2016 letter written to Feinstein by Obama’s top White House lawyer at the time, W. Neil Eggleston. The CIA declined to comment. Burr’s move was first reported by the New York Times.

Summary: ट्रम्प प्रशासन ने सी. आई. ए. की पूरी 'यातना' रिपोर्ट को गुप्त रखने का कदम उठाया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The administration of President Donald Trump has been quietly cutting support for halfway houses for federal prisoners, severing contracts with as many as 16 facilities in recent months, prompting concern that some inmates are being forced to stay behind bars longer than necessary.     The Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesman Justin Long confirmed the cuts in response to an email inquiry from Reuters, and said they only affect areas with small populations or underutilized centers. “The Bureau remains firmly committed to these practices, but has had to make some modifications to our programs due to our fiscal environment,” Long said. Halfway houses have been a part of the justice system since the 1960s, with thousands of people moving through them each year. For-profit prison companies such as Geo Group Inc have moved into the halfway house market, though many houses are run directly by government agencies or non-profit organizations. A Geo spokeswoman declined to comment for this article. The bureau, which falls under the U.S. Department of Justice, last year had about 180 competitive contracts with “residential reentry centers” run by non-profit and for-profit companies, such as Geo. The International Community Corrections Association says on its website there were about 249 separate halfway houses in communities nationwide that are covered by the 180 contracts. Federal judges who spoke to Reuters said the cuts are having an impact in their districts, particularly in states with fewer facilities or larger geographic areas where the nearest center might be several hundred miles away.     Judge Edmund Sargus of the Southern District of Ohio said it was a real “stumper” when in July the government ended its contract with the Alvis facility serving the Dayton area. Long said that the cuts have not reduced referral rates or placements, and only impact “about 1% of the total number of beds under contract.”     However, the changes coincide with other major criminal justice policy shifts by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has pushed for more aggressive prosecutions of drug offenses and a crackdown on illegal immigrants who commit crimes. In May, Sessions ordered prosecutors to charge defendants with the highest provable offense, a move that is likely to trigger lengthy prison sentences.  In 2016, of the 43,000 inmates released from federal prison, 79 percent were released into a halfway house or home confinement, according to the trade association. “We need to improve re-entry services ... This move flies in the face of that consensus,” said Kevin Ring, whose non-profit Families Against Mandatory Minimums has recently launched a Twitter campaign to raise awareness of the problem. Sessions is scheduled to testify next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Ring said he hopes lawmakers will ask Sessions about the changes underway for halfway houses.  “Is cutting re-entry opportunities really going to make us safer? Congress needs to ask the Justice Department if this is part of their strategy,” he said. For Kymjetta Carr, the cuts have had a personal impact. The 30-year-old from Cincinnati said she had expected her fiance Anthony Lamar to get out of prison and go to a halfway house in November, after serving seven years on a drug charge.  But she now has to tell their 10-year-old son his father won’t be out for Christmas or his birthday because Lamar’s release to a halfway house will not come until late July.  “It seems like the rug has been pulled out from under us,” she said, in an interview arranged through Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a nonprofit advocacy group.  Halfway houses are low-security residences for thousands of convicted prisoners serving alternative sentences or on release from prison into partial freedom programs on the outside. The facilities are meant to help prisoners reenter their communities, find a job and get their lives back on track. A study commissioned last year by the Justice Department found that centers have come under greater strain in recent years, as more people have been released from prison. Blair Campmier, executive director of Reality House in Columbia, Missouri, said he was notified in early June that the center’s eight-year-old contract would be terminated. Some of his clients were sent to halfway houses in Kansas City and Springfield, more than two hours away. “They were not happy, and their families were not happy,” said Campmier. Ricardo Martinez, the Chief U.S. District Judge in the Western District of Washington and Chairman of the Committee on Criminal Law of the Judicial Conference of the United States, told Reuters he has sent a letter to the Bureau of Prisons’ new Director Mark Inch requesting discussions. “From our perspective, these facilities are not only useful - they are essential,” Martinez said.

Summary: एक्सक्लूसिवः ट्रम्प प्रशासन ने आधे रास्ते में रहने वाले कैदियों के लिए समर्थन कम कर दिया


(Corrects headline and first paragraph to show spokesman was referring to U.S. financial system, not global financial system in April 15 story.) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An agreement with Iran aimed at preventing it from developing nuclear weapons does not include giving it access to the U.S.  financial system, the White House said on Friday. The comment from a White House spokesman at a regular news briefing followed a request by Iran’s central bank governor earlier on Friday for the United States and European Union to help Iran gain access to the global financial system.

Summary: अमेरिकी वित्तीय प्रणाली तक पहुंच ईरान परमाणु समझौते का हिस्सा नहीं हैः व्हाइट हाउस


BRASILIA (Reuters) - The approval rating for Brazilian President Michel Temer s scandal-plagued government has doubled to 6 percent from the prior survey, a new poll published on Wednesday showed, as the country s economy continues to improve. The survey by pollster Ibope, conducted between Dec. 7-10, said the number of people who considered Temer s government  bad  or  terrible  fell to 74 percent, from 77 percent in the previous survey in September. That represents the first improvement in Temer s unfavorable rating since he took over last year from his predecessor Dilma Rousseff, who was impeached for breaking budget rules. Brazil s economy continues to strengthen as it exits its worst recession in a century, posting its third consecutive quarter of growth in the third quarter. The poll comes as Brazil s Congress heads into a winter recess until February without voting to overhaul the pension system, Temer s top policy initiative that is seen as vital to fixing the country s finances but is widely unpopular. The government has notched some smaller legislative successes, including more flexible labor regulations that came into effect last month. In October, the lower house of Congress again rejected corruption charges against Temer.

Summary: सर्वेक्षण ने ब्राजील के राष्ट्रपति टेमर की कम अनुमोदन रेटिंग में सुधार दिखाया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton has one of the strongest resumes of anyone ever to run for U.S. president, with stints as first lady, senator and secretary of state, but she is also a polarizing figure and a Washington insider with decades of political baggage. Should Democrat Clinton, 69, defeat Republican Donald Trump, 70, in Tuesday’s election, she would become the first woman elected U.S. president, having already been the only first lady to win elected office and the first woman nominated for president by a major U.S. party. Clinton fell short in her first presidential bid in 2008, losing her party’s nomination to Barack Obama. Her time on the American political scene has come during an era of intense partisanship and gaping divisions in U.S. society. Americans hold dramatically differing views of Clinton. Clinton’s admirers consider her a tough, capable and sometimes inspirational leader who has endured unrelenting efforts by political enemies to chop her down. Her detractors consider her an unscrupulous and power-hungry opportunist. Clinton entered the 2016 race as her party’s odds-on favorite, but was an establishment figure, the ultimate insider with decades of political baggage, at a time when voters seemed enamored with outsiders. She staved off an unexpectedly stiff challenge from U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, who describes himself as a democratic socialist, to claim the Democratic nomination in July. For decades Clinton has battled conservatives and Republican adversaries and weathered controversies including her husband Bill Clinton’s infidelity, a failed Republican effort to remove him from office, investigations into past business dealings and her use of a private email server as secretary of state. She famously complained in 1998 during her husband’s presidency about a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Many Democrats back her for championing women's rights at home and abroad, social justice and access to healthcare, but opinion polls show a majority of U.S. voters do not trust her. [polling.reuters.com/#!poll/TM752Y15_2] Against Trump, she portrayed her candidacy as a bulwark against a unique threat that she said the real estate developer posed to American democracy. As President Obama’s secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, she grappled with civil wars in Syria and Libya, Iran’s nuclear program, China’s growing clout, Russian assertiveness, ending the Iraq war, winding down the Afghanistan war, and an unsuccessful bid to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Clinton was already running for president when, during a testy 11-hour congressional hearing in October 2015, she deflected Republican criticism of her handling of a 2012 attack by militants in Benghazi, Libya in which the U.S. ambassador died. That hearing and another in January 2013 while she was still secretary of state focused on allegations of State Department security lapses related to the attack. A mistrust of rivals and the media has long prompted Clinton to keep her guard up. “The truth is, through all these years of public service, the ‘service’ part has always come easier to me than the ‘public’ part,” Clinton said in accepting the 2016 Democratic nomination. “I get it that some people just don’t know what to make of me.” At the same convention, Obama cited her years of experience and said, “There has never been a man or woman, not me, not Bill - nobody more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States.” Republicans have accused Clinton of breaking the law while corresponding through a private email server as secretary of state. In July, FBI Director James Comey called Clinton “extremely careless” in her handling of classified information by email, but Obama’s Justice Department accepted his recommendation not to bring criminal charges. “If I had to do it over again, I would, obviously, do it differently,” Clinton said during a Sept. 26 debate with Trump, referring to her use of the private server as a “mistake” for which she took responsibility. The controversy flared again on Oct. 28 when Comey told U.S. lawmakers the FBI was investigating a new trove of emails as part of its probe, but said their significance was unclear. Trump seized on the probe into Clinton’s email, deriding her as “Crooked Hillary,” saying he would seek to put her behind bars if elected and encouraging his supporters to chant “lock her up.” Clinton portrayed Trump as a racist hate-monger, a sexist and a tax-dodger enamored with Russian President Vladimir Putin and unfit to serve as president and commander in chief. “Such a nasty woman,” Trump retorted during their Oct. 19 debate when she suggested he would try to get out of paying the higher taxes she advocates for the wealthy. Born in Chicago on Oct. 26, 1947, Hillary Rodham Clinton was  the eldest of three children of a small-business owner father she called a “rock-ribbed, up-by-your-bootstraps, conservative Republican” and a mother who was a closet Democrat. She said she inherited her father’s distinctive laugh - she called it “a big rolling guffaw” - and Americans have heard it frequently.  She attended public schools, then enrolled in 1965 at all-female Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where she headed the Young Republicans Club.  In a Wellesley commencement address, she seized the spotlight by starting her speech with extemporaneous remarks challenging comments made by the preceding speaker, a U.S. senator. Her political views changed during the 1960s civil rights struggles and Vietnam War escalation. She attended the 1968 Republican convention that nominated Richard Nixon, but soon became a Democrat. At Yale Law School, she met a similarly ambitious fellow student from Arkansas, Bill Clinton, and they became a couple. She moved to Washington to work for a congressional panel in the impeachment drive against Nixon, who resigned as president in 1974 during the Watergate scandal. She moved to Arkansas to be with Bill, married him in 1975, and was hired by a top law firm. He jumped into politics, eventually being elected governor, at age 32, in 1978. She gave birth to the couple’s only child, daughter Chelsea, in 1980. As Arkansas’ first lady, she was a high-powered lawyer in the capital Little Rock and a Wal-Mart corporate board member. Most Americans were introduced to her during her husband’s bid for the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination. Bill Clinton said voters would get “two for the price of one” if they elected him. She unapologetically said she was not a woman who “stayed home and baked cookies.” After a woman named Gennifer Flowers accused Bill Clinton during the campaign of a sexual affair, Hillary Clinton appeared on TV with her husband and referred to singer Tammy Wynette’s song, “Stand by Your Man.” “You know, I’m not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette,” she said, adding that she loved and respected her husband. “And you know, if that’s not enough for people, then heck, don’t vote for him,” she added.  Conservative critics painted her as a radical feminist and a threat to traditional family values. Bill Clinton defeated incumbent Republican President George H.W. Bush in November 1992. As first lady from 1993 to 2001, she was unusually exertive, diving into policy matters unlike many of her predecessors. Critics assailed her failed effort to win congressional passage of healthcare reform, deriding it as “Hillarycare.” At a 1995 U.N. conference in China on women, she declared that “human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.”  She and her husband faced a long investigation into past business dealings but ultimately no criminal charges were brought. A real estate venture known as Whitewater faced scrutiny, spawning an independent counsel investigation that later encompassed Bill Clinton’s sexual relationship with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster, a figure in the Whitewater controversy and a close friend of the Clintons from Arkansas, was found dead of a gunshot in 1993. His death was ruled a suicide. In a 2003 memoir, Hillary Clinton blasted “conspiracy theorists and investigators trying to prove that Vince was murdered to cover up what he ‘knew about Whitewater.’”  In 2000, the independent counsel investigation concluded there was insufficient evidence to show the Clintons had been involved in any criminal behavior related to Whitewater. In December 1998, the Republican-led House of Representatives voted to impeach a president for only the second time in U.S. history, charging Bill Clinton with “high crimes and misdemeanors” for allegedly lying under oath and obstructing justice to cover up his relationship with Lewinsky. The Republican-led Senate acquitted Clinton in February 1999. Hillary Clinton called the impeachment an abuse of power by Republicans with a “Soviet-style show trial” and condemned what she called “an attempted congressional coup d’etat.” She also said she “wanted to wring Bill’s neck” for the affair and upbraided him privately. Ultimately, she said, she decided she still loved him and remained after they went through counseling. “All I know is that no one understands me better and no one can make me laugh the way Bill does,” she wrote in her 2003 book “Living History.” Hillary Clinton soon launched her own bid for elected office. She bought a house in the town of Chappaqua to officially become a New York resident. She won election as a U.S. senator the same month her husband left office in January 2001. She served until 2009. She entered the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination as the front-runner, but then-senator Obama won the party’s nomination and beat Republican John McCain to become the first black president. In 2016, Obama campaigned vigorously for her against Trump. “What sets Hillary apart is that through it all, she just keeps on going, and she doesn’t stop caring, and she doesn’t stop trying. And she never stops fighting for us, even if we haven’t always appreciated it,” Obama told a September rally.

Summary: दुश्मनों का मुकाबला करते हुए, क्लिंटन ने व्हाइट हाउस के साथ एक निशान बनाया


SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - California would become the first U.S. state to require farmers to pay overtime to field workers and fruit pickers under a bill approved by the legislature on Monday and sent to Democratic Governor Jerry Brown for his approval. The bill, which passed on a mostly party-line vote, would phase in overtime pay for farmworkers from 2019 to 2022. Small farms that employ 25 or fewer workers would have an additional three years to phase in the pay. If signed into law by Brown, California, the largest U.S. agricultural producer, would the first state in the country to require farmers to pay overtime to laborers who work more than eight hours a day or 40 hours a week. The governor has not said if he will sign the measure. The bill is the culmination of decades of lobbying and pressure by the United Farmworkers Union. The Democratic-controlled legislature rejected a version of the same bill earlier this year, but supporters amended it to phase in the overtime rules more slowly. Opponents said that requiring farmers to pay overtime could damage the state’s agricultural economy, where workers toil up to 60 hours a week during the harvest season but can go for months without pay other times of the year. They predicted that farmers would be forced to cut workers’ hours to just 40 hours a week to avoid having to pay time-and-a-half or double-time overtime. Supporters, mostly Democrats, said the issue was one of fairness to farmworkers, who are among the few U.S. hourly workers not paid overtime. “For me, it is a vote about my conscience,” said Democratic Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia. “We will be improving the lives of people.”

Summary: कैलिफोर्निया के सांसदों ने राज्यपाल को भेजा कृषि श्रमिकों को ओवरटाइम करने के लिए अधिकृत करने वाला विधेयक


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump formally withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal on Monday, distancing America from its Asian allies, as China’s influence in the region rises. Fulfilling a campaign pledge to end American involvement in the 2015 pact, Trump signed an executive order in the Oval Office pulling the United States out of the 12-nation TPP. Trump, who wants to boost U.S. manufacturing, said he would seek one-on-one trade deals with countries that would allow the United States to quickly terminate them in 30 days “if somebody misbehaves.” “We’re going to stop the ridiculous trade deals that have taken everybody out of our country and taken companies out of our country,” the Republican president said as he met with union leaders in the White House’s Roosevelt Room. The TPP accord, backed heavily by U.S. business, was negotiated by former Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration but never approved by Congress.  Obama had framed TPP, which excluded China, as an effort to write Asia’s trade rules before Beijing could, establishing U.S. economic leadership in the region as part of his “pivot to Asia.” China has proposed a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific and has also championed the Southeast Asian-backed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.  Trump has sparked worries in Japan and elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific with his opposition to the TPP and his campaign demands for U.S. allies to pay more for their security.    His trade stance mirrors a growing feeling among Americans that international trade deals have hurt the U.S. job market. Republicans have long held the view that free trade is a must, but that mood has been changing. “It’s going to be very difficult to fight that fight,” said Lanhee Chen, a Hoover Institution fellow who was domestic policy adviser to 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. “Trump is reflecting a trend that has been apparent for many years.” Harry Kazianis, director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest think tank in Washington, said Trump must now find an alternative way to reassure allies in Asia. “This could include multiple bilateral trade agreements. Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam should be approached first as they are key to any new Asia strategy that President Trump will enact,” he said. Trump is also working to renegotiate the North American Free  Trade Agreement to provide more favorable terms to the United States, telling reporters he would meet leaders of NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada to get the process started. The new president met with a dozen American manufacturers at the White House on Monday, pledging to slash regulations and cut corporate taxes - but warning them he would take action on trade deals he felt were unfair. Trump, who took office on Friday, has promised to bring factories back to the United States - an issue he said helped him win the Nov. 8 election. He has not hesitated to call out by name companies he thinks should bring outsourced production back home. He said those businesses that choose to move plants outside the country would pay a price. “We are going to be imposing a very major border tax on the product when it comes in,” Trump said. He asked the group of chief executives from companies including Ford Motor Co, Dell Technologies Inc, Tesla Motors Inc and others to make recommendations in 30 days to stimulate manufacturing, Dow Chemical Co Chief Executive Officer Andrew Liveris told reporters. Liveris said the CEOs discussed the border tax “quite a bit” with Trump, explaining “the sorts of industry that might be helped or hurt by that.” “Look: I would take the president at his word here. He’s not going to do anything to harm competitiveness,” Liveris said. “He’s going to actually make us all more competitive.” At part of the meeting observed by reporters, Trump provided no details on how the border tax would work.  The U.S. dollar fell to a seven-week low against a basket of other major world currencies on Monday, and global stock markets were shaky amid investor concerns about Trump’s protectionist rhetoric. “A company that wants to fire all of its people in the United States, and build some factory someplace else, and then thinks that that product is going to just flow across the border into the United States - that’s not going to happen,” he said. The president told the CEOs he would like to cut corporate taxes to the 15 percent to 20 percent range, down from current statutory levels of 35 percent - a pledge that will require cooperation from the Republican-led U.S. Congress. But he said business leaders have told him that reducing regulations is even more important. “We think we can cut regulations by 75 percent. Maybe more,” Trump told business leaders.  “When you want to expand your plant, or when Mark wants to come in and build a big massive plant, or when Dell wants to come in and do something monstrous and special – you’re going to have your approvals really fast,” Trump said, referring to Mark Fields, CEO of Ford. Fields said he was encouraged by the tone of the meeting. “I know I come out with a lot of confidence that the president is very, very serious on making sure that the United States economy is going to be strong and have policies - tax, regulatory or trade - to drive that,” he said. Trump told the executives that companies were welcome to negotiate with governors to move production between states.

Summary: ट्रम्प ने प्रशांत व्यापार समझौते से अमेरिका को बाहर निकाला, एशिया संबंधों को ढीला किया


ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Close to 100 prisoners escaped from prison in central Ivory Coast on Sunday in one of many security breaches in the West African economic powerhouse this year, state radio said. Ninety-six prisoners escaped from the Katiola facility at dawn while the gate was open temporarily to allow them to do chores in the vicinity, the radio station said. About 10 have since been recaptured. The jail break follows a similar escape this month in the commercial capital Abidjan when 20 people fled after assaulting police officers in a court house. In other incidents, weapons were stolen and in one case an officer was killed.  It was not immediately clear if there had been any violence at Katiola, located about 400 km inland from the Atlantic coast. Government officials were not immediately available for comment. A series of military mutinies this year has threatened to derail a fragile peace in Ivory Coast, the world s leading cocoa producer, which emerged from a decade of turmoil and a 2011 civil war as one of the world s fastest-growing economies.

Summary: मध्य आइवरी कोस्ट में दर्जनों कैदी फरार


WASHINGTON - Some key U.S. senators still had concerns about the Republican tax bill in the Senate, as a procedural motion to formally open debate on the measure was approved on Wednesday.  Here is a list of Republicans pivotal to the bill’s fate. The moderate senator from Maine has qualms about Republicans’ plan to include in the tax bill a repeal of a federal fee imposed on people who do not comply with Obamacare’s “individual mandate.” The fee is meant to encourage young, healthy people to get health insurance so that premiums are affordable for old, sick people. Collins and others fear repealing the fine would drive up insurance premium costs, canceling out tax-cut gains that many of their constituents might get from the tax bill. Collins said Republican leaders had promised her to take up two healthcare provisions before the end of the year to help mitigate the impact of repealing the fee. Those provisions would help insurers cover expensive patients and continue Obamacare subsidy payments for low-income people for two years. Collins has also prepared an amendment to the tax bill to make state and local property tax deductible up to $10,000, a provision that is part of the House of Representatives’ tax bill. Both the Senate and House bills end deductibility of state and local tax income and sales tax. Unlike the House bill, the Senate bill ends property tax deductibility too. Collins sidestepped a question on whether she would vote for the tax bill. She said: “We’re doing this one step at a time.” The senator from Alaska will vote for the tax bill, she wrote on Twitter on Wednesday evening. Murkowski said a number of the bill’s features were “very attractive,” noting that it would lower tax rates, double the child tax credit and double the standard deduction. She said it also included a provision she had written, to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, to oil and gas drilling. Murkowski said it was important to enact reforms separately to help stabilize the individual market in health insurance. The Montana Republican has concerns about the bill’s treatment of “Main Street” businesses. He said on Wednesday he had secured an agreement to increase a 17.4 percent deduction for owners of pass-through businesses to 20 percent. The senator from Wisconsin also has demanded more favorable treatment for “pass-through” businesses, which include sole proprietorships and partnerships, as a condition of his support. Corker, a deficit hawk from Tennessee, said on Tuesday he had the outlines of a deal adding a tax snap-back provision to the bill that would raise taxes automatically if economic growth targets are not hit in the future to offset a higher deficit. Corker said that arrangement would satisfy his concerns that the tax cuts could add too much to the national debt. As of Wednesday evening, the details had not been announced. The snap-back proposal also became a target of growing criticism among conservative Republicans and lobbyists. The tax bill was expected to add $1.4 trillion to the $20 trillion national debt over 10 years. The Arizona conservative said on Wednesday he was more comfortable with the tax bill because of indications there would be provisions in it to protect against ballooning the deficit. Flake told National Public Radio he was concerned about “gimmicks,” but liked other parts of the bill, especially the corporate tax cut. The Arizona maverick and former presidential nominee sidestepped questions on Monday about how he would vote on the tax bill, telling reporters in the hallway to “stay tuned.” Like Corker and Flake, Oklahoma’s Lankford questions whether tax revenues from economic growth will compensate for the expected increase in the national debt under the tax plan. He has been working with them to “trigger” more revenues if needed. The Kansas lawmaker is also wary of the impact on the national debt, pointing to his own state’s recent experience of fiscal problems following tax cuts.

Summary: फैक्टबॉक्सः अमेरिकी सीनेट कर विधेयक की लड़ाई में रिपब्लिकन देखेंगे


NEW YORK (Reuters) - Democratic New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio scored a decisive victory on Tuesday in his bid to secure a second four-year term in charge of the United States’ biggest city. With more than 75 percent of the city’s voting precincts reporting, de Blasio, 56, had won nearly 65 percent, a margin of 35 percentage points over his Republican opponent, state Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, according to New York City’s Board of Elections. The New York Times and other media called the race for de Blasio. De Blasio, who held a comfortable lead in opinion polls leading up to Election Day, had been widely expected to cruise to victory in a city of 8.5 million people dominated by Democratic voters.  A progressive liberal, de Blasio in the past week campaigned with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent. Sanders backed de Blasio’s call for a tax hike on city residents earning more than $500,000 a year, a measure with little chance of passing the state legislature in Albany. The mayor has positioned himself as one of the most vocal critics of Republican President Donald Trump, who has received strong disapproval ratings from voters in his native city. Daisy Taberas, 71, who immigrated from Peru 48 years ago, said she voted for de Blasio because of her concerns over Trump’s stance on immigration. “I like the way (de Blasio) works with children in the schools, and he’s trying to protect the city and he cares about immigration,” Taberas said after casting her ballot at a Manhattan polling site.  De Blasio has taken heat for problems in the city’s aging subway system, the largest in the United States. The mayor, who has faced complaints over rising disruptions and delays on the subway system, has emphasized that it is run by a state-controlled authority, not the city. He has also been plagued by accusations of a pay-to-play culture within City Hall. A former donor, Jona Rechnitz, recently testified at the corruption trial of a union boss that he established a direct line to the de Blasio administration after raising money for the mayor’s election campaign in 2013. After years of investigation, federal prosecutors said in March they would not charge de Blasio, a point he reiterated on the campaign trail. The mayor campaigned on his efforts to increase affordable housing, establish universal pre-kindergarten for 4-year-olds and maintain the city’s historically low crime rates.

Summary: न्यूयॉर्क के मेयर डी ब्लासियो ने व्यापक रूप से अपेक्षित परिणाम में फिर से चुनाव जीता


VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria s co-governing Social Democrats (SPO) and conservative (OVP), who are leading in polls ahead of the Oct. 15 election, said on Friday they would sue each other in an escalating political smear scandal. A public outcry over derogatory Facebook pages targeting OVP leader Sebastian Kurz, run by campaign consultants hired by the SPO, has already led to the departure of its campaign manager and loss of popularity in a recent poll.  The limit has been reached. We re suing,  OVP general secretary Elisabeth Koestinger told a news conference. She said her party was preparing a libel suit against an employee of SPO campaign consultant Tal Silberstein, whom the SPO fired in August, to force him to retract comments that the OVP had offered him 100,000 euros ($116,980) to switch sides.  We are also preparing to sue the SPO in relation to incitement,  she said, adding the lawsuit could be broadened. SPO chairman Christoph Matznetter said the SPO was preparing a lawsuit against Kurz s spokesman seeking to clarify whether he did or did not offer money to Silberstein s employee. He said such an act could amount to bribery and  industrial espionage . SPO Chancellor Christian Kern, who has governed in a tension-ridden  grand coalition  with the OVP, has said he knew nothing of the  dirty campaigning  pages and has asked Facebook to unmask the people running them. At the behest of the SPO, Vienna prosecutors are investigating unnamed persons for defamation as the pages also included derogatory content aimed at Kern.  The OVP is leading pre-election polls at around 34 percent, while the SPO has slipped to third place at 22 percent below the far-right, anti-immigrant Freedom Party at 27 percent.

Summary: ऑस्ट्रिया के रूढ़िवादी, सोशल डेमोक्रेट मतदान से पहले एक-दूसरे पर मुकदमा करेंगे


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Baltimore community organizer Perry Hopkins, 55, is looking forward to stepping into a voting booth for the first time in his life this election season. Hopkins lost his never-exercised right to vote when he was convicted for drug and other offenses. He gained it back last month when Maryland joined a growing list of U.S. states making it easier for ex-convicts to vote. “To have the right to vote now is empowering. I’m stoked,” said Hopkins, who spent a total of 19 years in prison for non-violent crimes, and was one of 40,000 in the state to regain his right to vote from a legislative action.  “I plan to vote in every election possible. I’m voting for mayor, I’m voting for city councilman in my district, and, yes, I’m voting for president,” said Hopkins. He hopes to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the front-runner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, on Nov. 8. Hopkins is among some 800,000 Americans who have regained the right to vote in the last two decades as about two dozen states have eased restrictions on felons casting ballots, according to the Sentencing Project, a prison reform advocacy group. The restoration of voting rights has drawn support from both Democrats and Republicans as a way to improve prisoners’ reintegration into society. “The trend is to reconsidering policies and scaling back (restrictions). There are setbacks on the way, but the trend is in that direction,” said Mark Mauer, the Sentencing Project’s executive director. Advocates contend it is also a way of promoting racial justice, as African-Americans are convicted of crimes and sent to prison at about twice the rate of the overall U.S. population. Of the 5.8 million Americans banned from voting, 2.2 million are African-American, according to the group. In three states - Virginia, Florida and Kentucky - more than a fifth of black residents outside of prison are barred from casting a ballot. About 13 percent of the U.S. population is African-American. Wyoming’s Republican-controlled legislature last year restored voting rights to felons convicted of non-violent crimes. A lawsuit before the Iowa Supreme Court aims to strike down the state’s voting restriction. Iowa, along with Kentucky and Florida, have the country’s harshest rules, prohibiting all ex-felons from voting unless they secure an exemption from the governor. In Kentucky, outgoing Democratic Governor Steve Beshear signed an executive order in November granting the vote to non-violent offenders who had finished their sentences, including parole. His successor, Republican Matt Bevin, rolled back the order, saying Beshear had acted without approval of the legislature. At least 60,000 California inmates had voting rights extended to them in August when state officials dropped their challenge to a court ruling that allowed newly released felons to cast ballots. “We’re seeing more of these proposals. I do think that change takes time, it’s an issue that we’ve seen people come around to,” said Tomas Lopez, a counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice in New York, who tracks felon disenfranchisement. While the initiatives have seen bipartisan support in some states, that breaks down on the presidential campaign trail. Among Democrats, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has a plank in his platform calling for the restoration of voting rights to ex-inmates. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called on the campaign trail for felons to get rights back. None of the three Republican candidates - real estate magnate Donald Trump, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Governor John Kasich - mention felons’ voting rights in their platforms. The United States has a patchwork of state laws governing felons’ voting rights, many dating from the 19th century. They range from two states - Maine and Vermont - that allow prison  inmates to vote, to the lifetime bans. Re-enfranchising felons has drawn uncommon political bedfellows, with the liberal American Civil Liberties Union aligned with Mark Holden, the general counsel for Koch Industries, the conglomerate controlled by conservative political donors Charles and David Koch. Efforts are also under way in Congress, often the scene of bitter partisan divide, to address the issue. Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, has sponsored a bill that would restore voting rights in federal elections to ex-felons without violent offenses. Democrat Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate minority leader, is co-sponsor. The American Correctional Association, the Police Executive Research Forum and the American Probation and Parole Association also have backed the trend as potentially helping to reduce crime. A 2011 study by the Florida parole board showed that ex-offenders who were able to vote were one-third as likely to end up back in prison.  “To continue to place a scarlet letter on an individual as if they had a life sentence is just wrong,” said Veronica Cunningham, the parole association’s executive director. (This version of the story corrects the last name of counsel to Lopez instead of Perez in paragraph 15)

Summary: अमेरिकी राज्य अधिक पूर्व सदस्यों को मतदान का अधिकार वापस दे रहे हैं


BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Wednesday the European Union was ready to act “within a matter of days” if proposed new U.S. sanctions on Russia undermined the bloc’s energy security. The U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to slap new sanctions on Russia, which could affect European firms. “The U.S. bill could have unintended unilateral effects that impact the EU’s energy security interests,” Juncker said in a statement after a meeting of European Commissioners. “This is why the Commission concluded today that if our concerns are not taken into account sufficiently, we stand ready to act appropriately within a matter of days. America first cannot mean that Europe’s interests come last.”

Summary: यूरोपीय संघ के जंकर ने कहा कि रूस पर नए अमेरिकी प्रतिबंधों पर कार्रवाई करने के लिए तैयार हैं


DIPPOLDISWALDE, Germany (Reuters) - Like a third of his neighbors in the east German town of Dippoldiswalde, Rene Rothe voted for the far right in last Sunday s election. The biggest concern for the 57-year-old milk farmer was migrants - especially if they drain government funds.  There s loads of refugees here in the town and I m wondering what will happen to my pension,  he said as he emerged from one of the renovated pastel-colored shops that line Dippoldiswalde s clean cobbled streets. The town of 14,500 people has taken in 132 asylum seekers, according to the town s official website.  I have to pay for what the refugees need, and then when their families follow I ll have to pay again won t I?  he said. Campaigning on a platform to  take your country back , the Alternative for Germany (AfD) won 12.6 percent of the national vote, propelling it into parliament as the third largest party and making it the first far-right group to win seats in the lower house since the 1950s. In the state of Saxony, where Dippoldiswalde lies, the AfD was the overall winner, beating even Chancellor Angela Merkel s Christian Democrats (CDU), who won at the national level.  While the former Communist east has taken in far fewer than the west of the more than a million migrants that have arrived in Germany in the past several years, the AfD won around one fifth of votes there compared to around one in ten in the west. The AfD spokesman in Dippoldiswalde, Rolf Suessmann, said voters turned to his party because they were angry about the government s liberal migrant policy and some felt left behind. Problems in the town ranged from a patchy mobile network and small firms facing problems with digitalization to low pay, with some people earning less than 10 euros an hour, he said.  Here especially most people don t agree with the idea of a multicultural society,  Suessmann, a bailiff, told Reuters. Cultural differences between east and west, reunited less than 30 years ago, persist.  In the west a multicultural society of immigration is seen as a cultural achievement whereas in the east it s seen as a threat,  said Werner Patzelt, political scientist at Dresden s Technical University. Protest groups find more fertile ground in east Germany where party preferences are not set in stone and people tend to trust institutions less than in the west, he added.  The concern over pensions was an example of that. Germany s population is aging fast and people worry that there will not be enough young workers to fill the pension pots when they hit retirement age. Some are concerned that because many migrants are claiming benefits, it will detract from their own welfare. Germany s finance minister has insisted that the migrant issue had not left anyone in Germany with even a euro less for their family or children. The AfD has said it has not finalised its position on pensions. Many rural areas in eastern Germany suffered a  brain drain  after reunification as young, educated people moved to the west, said Thomas Krueger, head of the German government s bpb agency for civic education.  While some eastern industrial zones and university towns have flourished since - Saxony itself has become known as  Silicon Saxony  due to its success as a high-tech hub - many people in rural areas, some of whom have to travel 40 km (25 miles) to get to a local authority, feel forgotten, he said.  In many regions there was emigration, no businesses settled, there were no prospects for jobs and on top of that there was new competition for jobs even in small and medium-sized businesses, with workers from central and eastern Europe suddenly there,  Krueger said. Polling institute infratest dimap said its exit polls on election day showed that while almost three-quarters of AfD voters thought their personal economic situation was good, some 42 percent felt disadvantaged compared to others. Those who voted for the party were concerned about losing their German culture, refugees changing the country and Islam getting too much influence, the survey of thousands of voters showed. Almost two-thirds voted for the AfD in protest, it said. The party fared better among men than women and most of its voters were of working age. Around one fifth were unemployed while another fifth were laborers. White-collar workers and self-employed people also make up a sizeable part of their voters. Manfred Guellner, head of Forsa polling institute, said some of the AfD s voters in the east saw themselves as the losers in reunification.  They feel left behind and they re looking for a scapegoat and now they ve found one in the refugees, who they think are getting all the money that they lack,  he said. The jobless rate in Dippoldiswalde is only four percent, labor office data showed.  But Gisela, 66, lost her job at a restaurant shortly after reunification and was unemployed for 26 years before reaching pension age.   The foreigners are given everything and when we want something the answer is no,  she said, sitting on a bench overlooking the spot where the restaurant once stood. She said she could not remember who she voted for and asked that her surname not be used.  The foreigners need to go back home quickly and the young people need to get work,  she said.

Summary: छोड़ दिया गया महसूस करते हुए, खतरे में, पूर्वी जर्मनों ने दूर-दराज़ वोट के साथ विद्रोह किया


MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia s foreign ministry said on Thursday that moves by Alphabet Inc s (GOOGL.O) Google to place articles from Russian news outlets Sputnik and Russia Today lower in search results would amount to censorship. Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, speaking on stage at an international forum last Saturday, responded to a question about Sputnik articles appearing on Google by saying the company was working to give less prominence to  those kinds of websites  as opposed to delisting them.  Speaking at a news briefing, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday Google was acting under strong political pressure from the U.S. authorities.

Summary: रूस का कहना है कि गूगल स्पुतनिक को डाउन-रैंकिंग करेगा, आरटी सेंसरशिप होगी


(Reuters) - U.S. Congressman Ro Khanna asked the Department of Defense for an investigation into the business practices of aircraft components supplier TransDigm Group Inc, sending the company’s shares down as much as 9.7 percent on Tuesday. In a letter dated March 20 to Glenn Fine, the acting inspector general of the U.S. DoD, Khanna requested for a probe into the company “for potential waste, fraud and abuse in the defense industrial base”. Khanna, who is a member of the House Armed Services Committee, wrote that recent reports indicate TransDigm may be operating as a "hidden monopolist" and more information must be made available to the public on the company's business practices. (bit.ly/2njH3vI) Short-seller Citron Research had issued a critical report on TransDigm in January. Shares of the company which has fallen nearly 4.4 percent since the beginning of the year, touched a one-month low of $214.99 on Tuesday. TransDigm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Summary: अमेरिकी सांसद ने डीओडी से ट्रांसडिगम की प्रथाओं की जांच करने को कहा


CAIRO (Reuters) - Food security in the Middle East and North Africa is quickly deteriorating because of conflict in several countries in the region, the United Nations said on Thursday.  In those hardest hit by crises   Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Libya and Sudan   an average of more than a quarter of the population was undernourished, the U.N. s Food and Agriculture Organization said in its annual report on food security. A quarter of Yemen s people are on the brink of famine, several years into a proxy war between the Iran-aligned Houthis and the Saudi-backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi that has caused one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in recent times. The report focused on changes to food security and nutrition across the region since 2000. It said that undernourishment in countries not directly affected by conflict, such as most Gulf Arab states and most North African countries including Egypt, had slowly improved in the last decade. But it had worsened in conflict-hit countries.  The costs of conflict can be seen in the measurements of food insecurity and malnutrition,  the FAO s assistant director-general Abdessalam Ould Ahmed said.  Decisive steps towards peace and stability (need to be) taken.  Several countries in the region erupted into conflict following uprisings in 2011 that overthrew leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Syria s civil war, which also began with popular demonstrations, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and made more than 11 million homeless.

Summary: मध्य पूर्व, उत्तरी अफ्रीका में खाद्य सुरक्षा बिगड़ रही हैः संयुक्त राष्ट्र एजेंसी


BRATISLAVA (Reuters) - Slovak government leaders agreed on Friday to amend a coalition agreement to lure back a junior party which withdrew its support for the alliance three weeks ago, provoking a political crisis. The Slovak National Party (SNS), junior member in a three-party coalition, canceled the coalition agreement on Aug. 7, calling for a new deal that would give it more say in decision-making. Now leaders of the three parties   Prime Minister Robert Fico of leftist Smer, ethnic-Hungarian party Most-Hid leader Bela Bugar and SNS s Andrej Danko   have agreed to hold regular weekly meetings to meet the SNS s appeal for better communication within the coalition. Danko also complained on Thursday that co-ruling with Fico s Smer was difficult because both parties address the same voters. According to opinion poll by Polis agency, SNS support fell to 7.2 percent in August from 8.6 percent in March 2016 election.  The government needs the votes of all three coalition parties to maintain a majority in the 150-seat parliament and Fico struck a conciliatory tone on Friday.  There is no alternative to this government. We have to find new ways to communicate, to understand each other better,  Fico told journalists. SNS has argued for more government investment to revitalize thermal spa resorts and wants a national airline to be set up while Smer says spending must not endanger reaching a balanced budget planned for 2019. Opposition lawmakers have alleged the SNS pulled out of the coalition to divert attention from a row over the distribution of 300 million euros ($351.69 million) in EU subsidies by the education ministry. The conflict escalated last week when Fico demanded Education Minister Peter Plavcan s resignation over the alleged mismanagement of the subsidies managed by his department. Slovak media have reported that the ministry chose several companies with no history in research or innovation as recipients of EU subsidies aimed at supporting science. SNS leader Andrej Danko said the allegations of the misappropriation of funds were unfounded but agreed to replace Plavcan.

Summary: स्लोवाक सरकार के नेताओं ने संकट को शांत करने के लिए नया गठबंधन समझौता किया


YAUCO, Puerto Rico (Reuters) - Hurricane Maria battered this quiet Puerto Rican outpost and covered it with mud, but it couldn t separate Sandra Harasimowicz from her beloved pets. She and her husband Gary Rosario said they clung to the side of a house for hours last week to save their seven dogs from a hurricane that reduced their picturesque neighborhood in Puerto Rico to a desolate mud pit. Harasimowicz, 43, a native of Poland said the couple were trapped neck-deep in water after Hurricane Maria tore into their home in the southwestern town of Yauco last Wednesday, sending them and their dogs scrambling onto a neighbor s roof to escape. The storm, which has killed at least 10 people across the U.S. territory, turned the couple s street into bed of debris-strewn silt after a nearby river burst its banks. The surging flow entered their house  like it was the end of the world,  Harasimowicz told Reuters on Monday. Trying to keep the animals close in the hurricane while holding tight to solar panels on the neighbor s roof, Harasimowicz said she watched aghast as one of the dogs jumped four times into the raging torrent that had swamped the street. Each time Rosario, who is Puerto Rican and a national guardsman, leapt in after the errant dog to haul it back to safety.  I thought I was going to lose him; he just did it because he s such an animal lover,  said Harasimowicz, whose family lives in the city of Poznan in western Poland.  I said:  That s it, I m losing the animals and I m losing my husband.  The mother of two explained how the couple had earlier stashed their eight cats on top of the kitchen cupboards to ride out the storm when the floodwaters started rising to their chins. The couple had already sent their children, aged 6 and 12, to stay with a friend nearby before Maria struck. But after failing to find a refuge for the cats and dogs, Harasimowicz said they felt they should remain there with the animals, in part because they did not believe the storm would be so severe.  Basically, we underestimated,  Harasimowicz said. Maria knocked out power and telecommunications across the island of 3.4 million, unleashing chaos and disorder that residents believe will take months from which to recover. Residents of the Yauco estate known as Urbanizacion Luchetti returned to find furniture, refrigerators and washing machines had moved around their homes in the mud bath. Floors were caked in a musty-smelling brown sludge. Furnishings were ruined.  Everyone says they want to leave here,  said neighbor Jose Velazquez, 57, reviewing the mess Maria had made of his home. At the end of the street, the rotting body of a pit bull lay on its side by a house railing, maggots teeming at its neck. Harasimowicz and Rosario returned home Wednesday night when the flooding began to recede, spending the night on top of a bunk bed with their pets. But they were horrified as the waters began rising again. Believing they had no choice in order to survive, the couple broke into a neighbor s house with a hammer so they could occupy its rooftop annex with their pets. By then, they had acquired another dog that had wandered up seeking shelter from the storm.  It was either break in or die,  said Rosario, a jovial 49-year-old who on Monday was taking stock of his ruined home and the family s gaggle of pets, all of which survived. The couple have bathed and washed their clothes in rainwater collecting on the roof, and are now planning their next move. After 12 years in Puerto Rico - seven of them in Yauco - Harasimowicz said she has had enough.  Never again,  she said.  This is over for me.

Summary: दंपति ने पालतू जानवरों को बचाने के लिए छत पर तूफान मारिया की अवहेलना की-उनमें से बहुत से


NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton has no shortage of economic advisors. Scores of world-class experts pour ideas into her campaign on the policies she should champion in her bid for the White House. But before much of the input reaches the Democratic candidate, it is filtered through a pair of staffers known inside the campaign as the “Economikes.” Working out of Clinton’s campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, Michael Shapiro and Michael Schmidt are helping shape what could be a lasting economic agenda if the former secretary of state overcomes Republican rival Donald Trump in November’s election. In an interview with Reuters, Shapiro and Schmidt described Clinton’s process for forming policy by broadly soliciting ideas and crafting them into the action points that she takes to voters.  Before Clinton takes a position, Shapiro said, “she wants to know we have talked to and gotten input from everyone, making sure that we’re consulting with labor, making sure that we’re consulting with experts.” Clinton’s inclusive approach to developing policy positions has been faulted for being slow and unwieldy. Much of the work of sifting through the wealth of sometimes disparate ideas and data it yields falls to the Economikes. Both are recent graduates of Yale Law School. Prior to joining the campaign, Schmidt, 30, worked at the U.S. Treasury Department and the Yale Investments Office, helping manage the university’s endowment. Shapiro, 29, worked at the White House for the National Economic Council. Earlier this year, he married the daughter of New York Senator Chuck Schumer. The pair helps Clinton draw upon a deep bench of advisers, including economist Alan Krueger, Duke professor Aaron Chatterji and Simon Johnson, a former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund, along with scores of other academics and business people.  Some communicate regularly through emails, conference calls, meetings and memos. Others are tapped once or twice for specific expertise. Frequent contributor Alan Blinder, the former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, said he will “usually email the Mikes” with ideas. The fruit of the process will be on display today in Ohio, where Clinton is expected to give a speech contrasting her economic vision with that of Trump, a businessman who often names himself as his main adviser and is known for his off-the-cuff style. Clinton has called raising middle class incomes the defining economic challenge of the time. So far, she has presented a mix of goals, including making child care more affordable and boosting jobs. Some business leaders have said her approach is reassuring, but progressives have criticized her policies as too moderate. Trump, in contrast, often has taken business leaders by surprise with his policy proposals. He has promised to renegotiate international trade deals to pump up U.S. manufacturing, vowed to penalize companies that move their headquarters abroad to avoid taxes, and pledged to dismantle Obama’s financial regulation reforms.    While the “Economikes” nickname began as a joke, Shapiro said the campaign’s digital team made it stick by using it in a Q&A posted on Clinton’s web site. Their bosses, senior policy advisers Jake Sullivan and Maya Harris, have been known to stick their heads out of their offices and ask for “one of the Mikes.” On email chains, CC: notes will sometimes include “plus the Economikes.” Humor aside, their work often is serious business. After the tainted water crisis hit national headlines in January, Clinton dispatched Schmidt and her political director, Amanda Renteria, to Flint, Michigan to investigate.  Schmidt said the effort informed Clinton’s approach to the water crisis during the Democratic debate in Flint, including her call for the governor to resign.     In other cases, they said, Clinton will ask the pair to research issues she’s heard on the campaign trail, such as the case of an Iowa bowling alley owner who told the candidate student debt made it hard for him to get business loans. The campaign since has rolled out proposals to allow for refinancing of student debt and the use of income-based repayment programs to cut monthly payments. Shapiro and Schmidt said the policy points they bring back to Clinton typically lead her to ask more questions, a process that can go on for several rounds before the candidate finally settles on a policy proposal.

Summary: 'इकोनॉमिक्स': क्लिंटन की आर्थिक नीति के द्वारपाल


COX S BAZAR (Reuters) - Grieving Rohingya Muslim refugees buried 18 of their own, including children, on Friday, hours after they drowned off the Bangladesh coast where their boat capsized in heavy seas.   Relatives wept after they identified the bodies in a makeshift morgue and took them away to be buried in a mass grave.    Our boat hit a big rock and it turned over,  said Lalu Miya, whose wife, daughter and two sons died in the accident late Thursday. Another two children are missing. Suna Miya said he lost three daughters, aged 10, 8 and 3, in the accident. His wife and three other children survived. As men prepared the burial ground in daylight, relatives squatted around babies covered in cloth. Hands reached out to touch the children. Miya bent over his daughter to cradle her head, and kissed her goodbye.   More than 60 refugees from Myanmar are believed to have drowned, the latest victims in what the United Nations says is the world s fastest-developing refugee emergency.   A surge in the numbers of Rohingya fleeing the Myanmar military campaign has taken the total to more than half a million in Bangladesh. Abul Kalam, 55, who survived, said his wife, two daughters and a grandson were dead. Kalam said armed Buddhists had taken away his livestock and food a week ago. He said villagers had been summoned to a military office and told that there were no such people as Rohingya in Myanmar.   The refugee boat capsized as darkness fell, in driving wind and rain, and high seas.   An official with the International Organization for Migration said 23 people were confirmed dead and 40 were missing. Seventeen survived.

Summary: नाव पलटने के बाद रोहिंग्या मुसलमानों ने खुद को अलविदा कहा


ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey issued detention warrants for the lawyers of two hunger-striking teachers on Tuesday, days before they are due to appear in court, lawyers representing the academics said. Nuriye Gulmen, a literature professor, and Semih Ozakca, a primary school teacher, have been on hunger strike for more than six months after they lost their jobs in a crackdown following a failed coup against President Tayyip Erdogan. Doctors say they have been surviving on liquids and supplements, but have described their condition as dangerously weak for several months. Authorities detained them in May saying they had links to the militant leftist DHKP-C group, deemed a terrorist organization by Turkey.  The warrants were issued for 18 lawyers, all members of two law offices defending the teachers.  The detention of our colleagues today is an attempt in vain to leave Gulmen and Ozakca defenseless,  a lawyer representing the pair told Reuters, adding that more than 2,000 lawyers had applied to defend them due to the case s symbolic importance. Police raided lawyers  offices in Istanbul and Ankara and detained 10 lawyers, while the search for eight others continued. On Thursday, Gulmen and Ozakca will appear in court for the first time since their arrest. So far, 150,000 state employees including civil servants, academics and security personnel have been fired since last year s coup attempt, which Erdogan blamed on followers of U.S.-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen. Gulen denies any involvement. Critics accuse the government of using the coup as a pretext to purge dissident voices from public institutions. Last month, the European Court of Human Rights rejected a request by the two teachers to order Ankara to release them on health grounds.

Summary: तुर्की ने मुकदमे से पहले भूख हड़ताल कर रहे शिक्षकों के वकीलों को हिरासत में लिया


NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lawyers for an executive at Turkey s majority state-owned Halkbank who is accused of helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions on Wednesday asked a U.S. federal judge to declare a mistrial as jurors were expected to begin deliberating. In a motion filed in Manhattan federal court, the lawyers for Mehmet Hakan Atilla said prosecutors had prejudiced the jury by asking their client during cross-examination on Tuesday whether he remembered that a report by a Turkish expert concluded he violated sanctions. Atilla s lawyers immediately objected before Atilla could answer, and U.S. District Judge Richard Berman ordered the question stricken from the record. However, Atilla s lawyers said Wednesday that the damage had been done. They said jurors should not have been allowed to hear about the Turkish report because its author was not in court, depriving Atilla of his right to confront his accuser. They also said the question  grossly mischaracterized  the report s conclusion.  Asking this question in open court had the effect of introducing otherwise inadmissible hearsay and an expert opinion on the ultimate issue for the jury,  they said. Berman ordered prosecutors to respond to the motion by 5 p.m. (2200 GMT) Wednesday. Jurors had been expected to begin deliberating Wednesday morning after a three-week trial that has strained diplomatic relations between the United States and Turkey. At the center of the trial was explosive testimony from Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab, who pleaded guilty to charges of violating sanctions and testified for U.S. prosecutors. Zarrab testified that Atilla helped design fraudulent transactions of gold and food that allowed Iran to spend its oil and gas revenues abroad, including through U.S. financial institutions, defying U.S. sanctions. Zarrab also implicated Turkish officials in the scheme, including President Tayyip Erdogan. Attempts to reach Erdogan s spokesman for comment on the allegations at the trial have been unsuccessful. Erdogan has publicly dismissed the case as a politically motivated attack on his government. Atilla, testifying in his own defense at the trial, denied all the charges against him. Halkbank has denied taking part in any illegal transactions. Atilla s lawyers already asked for a mistrial last week after jurors heard testimony from Huseyin Korkmaz, a former Turkish police officer who said he led an investigation that included Atilla and was forced to flee Turkey to escape retaliation. Berman denied that motion. U.S. prosecutors charged nine people in the criminal case, though only Zarrab, 34, and Atilla, 47, were arrested by U.S. authorities.

Summary: तुर्की के बैंकर ने अमेरिकी प्रतिबंधों के मामले में गलत मुकदमे के लिए दूसरी बोली लगाई


SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military flew two strategic bombers over the Korean peninsula in a show of force late on Tuesday, as President Donald Trump met top defense officials to discuss how to respond to any threat from North Korea. Tensions have soared between the United States and North Korea following a series of weapons tests by Pyongyang and a string of increasingly bellicose exchanges between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.  North Korea has launched two missiles over Japan and conducted its sixth nuclear test in recent weeks as it fast advances toward its goal of developing a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland. The two U.S. Air Force B-1B bombers were joined by two F-15K fighters from the South Korean military after leaving their base in Guam, South Korea s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement on Wednesday.  After entering South Korean airspace, the two bombers carried out air-to-ground missile drills in waters off the east coast of South Korea, then flew over the South to waters between it and China to repeat the drill, the release said. The U.S. military said in a separate statement it conducted drills with Japanese fighters after the exercise with South Korea, making it the first time U.S. bombers have conducted training with fighters from both Japan and South Korea at night. The U.S. bombers had taken off from the Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. In August, Pyongyang threatened to fire intermediate-range missiles toward the vicinity of Guam, a U.S. Pacific territory that is frequently subjected to sabre-rattling from the North. South Korean and U.S. government officials have been raising their guard against more North Korean provocations with the approach of the 72nd anniversary of the founding of North Korea s ruling party, which fell on Tuesday. Trump hosted a discussion on Tuesday on options to respond to any North Korean aggression or, if necessary, to prevent Pyongyang from threatening the United States and its allies with nuclear weapons, the White House said in a statement.  Trump was briefed by Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford at a national security team meeting, the statement said. U.S. and South Korean wartime operational plans, including a plan to wipe out the North Korean leadership, were stolen by North Korean hackers last year, a South Korean ruling party lawmaker said on Wednesday. Some 235 gigabytes of military documents were taken from South Korea s Defense Integrated Data Center in September last year, Democratic Party representative Rhee Cheol-hee said in radio appearances on Wednesday, citing information from unidentified South Korean defense officials. In May, an investigative team inside the defense ministry announced the hack had been carried out by North Korea, but did not disclose what kind of information had been taken. The United Nations Security Council, which has imposed a series of ever tighter sanctions on North Korea, has banned four ships from ports globally for carrying coal from North Korea, including one vessel that also had ammunition. The vessels are the first to be designated under stepped-up sanctions imposed on North Korea by the 15-member council in August and September over two long-range ballistic missile launches and Pyongyang s sixth and largest nuclear test. China, North Korea s main ally and trading partner, has consistently argued sanctions alone will not work, urging Washington and Pyongyang to lower their rhetoric and return to the negotiating table. China s influential Global Times tabloid expressed alarm at how far the rhetoric on both sides had gone and how it had increased the risk of a  fatal misjudgment .    The international community won t accept North Korea as a nuclear power. North Korea needs time and proof to believe that abandoning its nuclear program will contribute to its own political and economic advantage. This positive process is worth a try,  the paper said in an editorial late on Tuesday.  War would be a nightmare for the Korean Peninsula and surrounding regions. We strongly urge North Korea and the U.S. to stop their bellicose posturing and seriously think about a peaceful solution,  it said.

Summary: अमेरिका ने कोरिया के ऊपर बमवर्षक विमान उड़ाए क्योंकि ट्रम्प ने विकल्पों पर चर्चा की


SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea congratulated China on its 19th Communist Party Congress on Wednesday amid increasingly frayed relationships between the traditional allies, as China tightens sanctions over Pyongyang s nuclear weapons program. The central committee of the North s ruling Workers  Party of Korea said that China had made  great progress in accomplishing the cause of building socialism with Chinese characteristics  under the correct guidance of the Communist Party.  We are greatly pleased over this,  the party central committee said in the message carried by the official KCNA news agency, adding that it  sincerely wished  the China congress  satisfactory success . Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said that many foreign political parties, organizations and dignitaries had sent their congratulations, including the Workers  Party of Korea.   This all shows that the international community is paying close attention to the 19th Party Congress. We express our thanks for this,  Lu told a daily news briefing. Officials and experts in South Korea had worried that Pyongyang may conduct a weapons test to coincide with the opening of the twice-a-decade congress in Beijing, but there was no sign of that as Chinese President Xi Jinping gave his opening speech. While the United States and its allies, and many people in China, believe Beijing should do more to rein in Pyongyang, the acceleration of North Korea s nuclear and missile capabilities has coincided with a near-total breakdown of high-level diplomacy between the two. China, Pyongyang s sole major ally and which accounts for more than 90 percent of world trade with the isolated country, has said it will strictly enforce U.N. Security Council sanctions banning imports of coal, textiles and seafood, while cutting off oil shipments to the North.

Summary: तनावपूर्ण संबंधों के बीच उत्तर कोरिया ने चीन को पार्टी कांग्रेस के लिए बधाई दी