JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghan soldier Mehrullah Safi s military career ended in southern Helmand province last year when a rocket-propelled grenade exploded next to him, severing his right leg. Now he sells mobile telephone cards in the street. Tens of thousands of Afghan troops have been disabled in the 16 years since a U.S.-led campaign ousted the Taliban in 2001. In city streets and marketplaces all over the country, they offer a stark reminder of the human cost of the war.  It was the worst day of my life,  Safi, a former army lieutenant, said.  We were surrounded by dozens of Taliban, there was a heavy fight going on and I was in a bad condition for two days until I was transferred to hospital.  With his left leg and a hand also shattered, Safi s leg was amputated in the field. After eight unsuccessful operations on his badly damaged left leg, he hopes a ninth will stabilize it.  I served my country and I don t regret being wounded but when I see my wounds have no value for my government, then I do regret it.  Safi says he received a one-off payment of 184,000 afghani ($2,690) when he was disabled, besides 10,500 afghani ($153) every month. Unable to walk, he sits in a small booth in a market in the eastern city of Jalalabad, supplementing his pension with about 5,000 to 8,000 afghani earned from the sales of mobile phone scratch cards each month.  I ve built a small business to feed my family but now municipal workers harass me in the market,  he said.  My family blames me for ruining their lives.  The government says it does what it can as it battles an insurgency that kills and wounds thousands of soldiers each year and tries to rebuild an economy destroyed by decades of strife. Wounded soldiers usually get a year s pay and a monthly pension. About 130,000 severely disabled military and civilian individuals now receive benefits, said government spokesman Fatah Ahmadzai.    But officials say they know the sum is far too small for veterans supporting families of five or more.  As much as we provide support to our disabled, it is nothing to what they have suffered,  said defense ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri.  The ministry is working day and night to find a way to increase the amount our soldiers are paid. But Afghanistan does not have the money to solve this issue on its own.  As U.S. forces prepare for an intensified engagement in Afghanistan, an end to the fighting appears a distant prospect and casualty numbers will certainly grow. That risks adding to the war-weariness of Afghan troops and their families and the difficulty in finding new recruits to fill the gaps.  My family tried to make me leave the army the first time I was wounded, but I refused,  said Hayatullah Sahar, who suffered two more injuries before leaving to work as a taxi driver.  When I was wounded the second and third times, my mother cried and begged me to leave. She even tore up my army identification and hospital papers. Afghanistan has run several advertising campaigns to whip up pride in its security forces and has trumpeted an Afghan team s participation in the Invictus Games for disabled soldiers. But the bitter reality is hard to counter, leaving many feeling painfully conflicted.  When I think back to when I joined the army, I regret it and blame myself,  said former soldier Riazullah, who lost both legs to a roadside bomb in the southeastern province of Ghazni.  My family also blames me for what happened, but I tell my children to study, and one day, they will understand the value of what I did for this country.

Summary: युद्ध में अक्षम, अफगान सैनिक सड़कों पर जीवन यापन करना चाहते हैं


MADRID (Reuters) - Spain s High Court said on Monday it had ordered that two leaders of Catalan separatist organizations be remanded in custody while they remain under investigation on suspicion of sedition. Prosecutors have alleged that Jordi Sanchez, the head of the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), and Jordi Cuixart, head of Omnium Cultural, were key to planning an Oct. 1 referendum on independence that the Spanish government considered illegal.

Summary: स्पेन के उच्च न्यायालय ने कैटलन के दो अलगाववादी नेताओं को हिरासत में भेजा


MADRID (Reuters) - The mounting political crisis in Spain over Catalonia s campaign for independence intensified on Saturday with a new row over the control of the local police force as the regional government pressed ahead with plans to hold an illegal vote next weekend. The State prosecutor in Catalonia told all local and national police forces on Saturday that they had been temporarily placed under a single chain of command reporting directly to the interior ministry in Madrid. But Catalonia s interior chief, Joaquim Forn, said his department and the local police, or Mossos d Esquadra, did not accept this decision.  We denounce the intervention of the state to control the police forces of Catalonia ... We will not accept this control,  Forn said in a televised speech. It was not immediately clear whether the regional administration and the Mossos could actually oppose the decision, as Spanish laws allow for the possibility of state police taking the lead over the police of an autonomous community during a joint operation. The central government representative in Catalonia, Enric Millo, had earlier said the Mossos remained in charge of security in Catalonia though they would be  coordinated  directly by the interior ministry and not by the local authorities, together with two national police forces also on the ground in Catalonia.  We are not taking over the police competencies of the regional government,  Millo told reporters after an event held by his People s Party (PP) in Palma de Mallorca, in Eastern Spain. Millo also called on Catalan leaders, including Forn, to stop encouraging street protests and demonstrations. Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia said the prosecutor s order would remain in place until at least Oct. 1, when the vote is due to take place. The Mossos are one of the symbols of Catalonia s autonomy and for many Catalans the prosecutor s decision may be reminiscent of the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War and subsequent dictatorship of Francisco Franco, when the Mossos were abolished. Several pro-independence groups have called for widespread protests on Sunday in central Barcelona.  Let s respond to the state with an unstoppable wave of democracy,  a Whatsapp message which was used to organize the demonstration read. The Catalonian government opened a new website on Saturday with details of how and where to vote on Oct. 1, challenging several court rulings that had blocked previous sites and declared the referendum unconstitutional.  You can t stem the tide,  Catalonia s president Carles Puigdemont said on Twitter in giving the link to the new website. But Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy insisted again that the vote should not go ahead.  It will not happen because this would mean liquidating the law,  he said at the PP event in Palma de Mallorca. Acting on court orders, the Spanish state police has already raided the regional government offices, arrested temporarily several senior Catalan officials accused of organizing the referendum and seized ballot papers, ballot boxes, voting lists and electoral material and literature. The finance ministry in Madrid has also taken control of regional finances to make sure public money is not being spent to pay for the logistics the vote or to campaign. Between 3,000 and 4,000 police officers coming from other Spanish regions have already arrived in Catalonia or are on their way. They will join 5,000 state police already based in the region and 17,000 local Mossos.

Summary: स्पेन और कैटेलोनिया में अवैध स्वतंत्रता मतदान के करीब आने पर पुलिसिंग को लेकर झड़प


PHOENIX (Reuters) - Arizona voters have narrowly approved a plan to pump $3.5 billion into education coffers over the next decade and put an end to a long-running legal battle, Republican Governor Doug Ducey said late on Thursday. The measure, approved by state lawmakers and Ducey last year, provides for Arizona to tap its land trust fund and provide an additional $300 for each student, from kindergarten through 12th grade, in public and charter schools. Arizona has historically ranked near the bottom of states in funding education. The latest unofficial results from Tuesday’s special election showed the measure garnering 50.82 percent of votes cast throughout the southwestern U.S. state, and while some 30,000 votes remained to be counted, Ducey declared victory. “This is a huge victory for public education in Arizona,” Ducey said in a statement. “After years of lawsuits and fighting, we are moving forward and funding our teachers, students and schools – instead of lawyers.” Voter approval was required because the measure involved a change to the state’s constitution. The narrow margin of the result proved that a sizeable number of voters disliked the plan, said Morgan Abraham, chairman of the “No” campaign. “This tells me that voters want to fund education the right way, not through the trust fund, but with general funds,” Abraham said, adding that he was disappointed by the outcome of the vote. Much of the controversy during the campaign centered on the funding, with critics saying Arizona was jeopardizing its future by taking too much money from its land trust fund. About 60 percent of the new money will come from the trust fund, and the rest from the state’s general fund. The governor’s office brokered the deal in a bid to end a 2010 lawsuit by a group of school districts and organizations that charged Arizona with failing to fund mandated inflation adjustments to schools during a recent recession.      The state’s highest court already had ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and the court case was being appealed by the state at the time of the deal.

Summary: एरिजोना के गवर्नर ने $3.5-billion शिक्षा वोट में जीत की घोषणा की


BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Celeste Perosino was investigating possible crimes committed by Argentina’s central bank during the “Dirty War” military dictatorship decades ago before her team was disbanded by the new conservative President Mauricio Macri. Days ahead of President Barack Obama’s arrival in Argentina for a rare visit by a U.S. leader, Perosino scoffs at praise from the White House for Macri as a “strong voice” for human rights. “The decision to shut down the bank’s human rights office was a decision that we see as a form of political and ideological persecution,” Perosino said. She is not the only one concerned. Obama’s visit, which coincides with the March 24 anniversary of the 1976 coup that installed a military junta, initially supported by the United States, has riled victims of the seven-year dictatorship and raised questions about Macri’s credentials as a staunch defender of human rights.  Macri, who took office in December, has said that his leftist predecessor former President Cristina Fernandez’s push to punish military repressors smacked of revenge.  His government’s human rights office held its first meeting with families who suffered at the hands of leftist militants in the 1970s and early ‘80s, rather than victims of the military’s crimes.  Then, in February, the government reinstated the rights of military officials who participated in atrocities to receive treatment in military hospitals. Rights campaigners talk of troubling infringements on civil rights. Macri was criticized for the arrest of a popular community activist and came under fire for the police’s use of rubber bullets against a community group rehearsing for Carnival that included children. The president has also moved to grant police increased powers to shut down public protests. Fernandez was widely praised by human rights groups and the left for re-opening trials dealing with abuses committed during the dictatorship, though right-wing opponents accused her of reopening old wounds.  The security forces killed up to 30,000 people. Many of them were “forcibly disappeared” - a euphemism for kidnapped and murdered - and hundreds of children were stolen from their imprisoned parents.     Macri’s human rights chief, Claudio Avruj, said the government is committed to defending human rights and that perpetrators of dictatorship-era crimes would continue to face trial. “We categorically reject everything the military coup stood for, the persecution, the disappearance and death of Argentine and foreign citizens,” Avruj said.      Obama’s trip marks the first bilateral visit by a U.S. president to Argentina in nearly two decades. Relations soured sharply during Fernandez’s leadership.  During last year’s presidential race, Macri pressed for Venezuela’s suspension from the regional Mercosur trade bloc, citing alleged rights abuses by President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government. “President Macri has been a strong voice for democracy and human rights in Latin America,” Obama’s deputy security adviser, Ben Rhodes, said last month. But rights campaigners fret that Macri, whose PRO party has previously voted against investigating economic crimes under the dictatorship, is already unraveling some of the progress made under Fernandez.  At the central bank, Perosino’s four-person team had been investigating financial crimes and how extensively civilian bank employees colluded with the military during the 1976-1983 crackdown against Marxist rebels, labor unions and other left-wing opponents. The team was established by Fernandez. Perosino said they were only six months into their work and were still in the early stages of pouring over the bank’s archives. Among lines of investigation, Perosino said she was delving into the kidnap and murder of five central bank employees, ties between the bank and the former SIDE spy agency, and how the bank helped large private companies which complied with the generals by assuming their debt.  A central bank spokesman said the office was shut down in January “after it found nothing”.   “Our work wasn’t close to being done,” said Perosino, standing among protestors outside the central bank demonstrating against job cuts at the regulator. In a move to unearth new details about the “Dirty War,”  U.S. national security adviser Susan Rice on Thursday said the United States would declassify documents from U.S. military and intelligence agencies related to that period at the request of the Argentine government. Carlos Munoz, a graphic designer who survived imprisonment and torture in 1978 by agreeing to fabricate false documents for the military, said shedding new light on the dictatorship would be a welcome sign “the United State is real about human rights.” But he voiced concern that Macri’s record on human rights has been thin so far. “We had made a lot of progress in ending dictatorship-era impunity. I hope that we don’t go backwards,” said Munoz.  In an open letter to Obama earlier this month, Argentine Nobel peace prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel urged the U.S. president to acknowledge that Washington was an accomplice in military coups throughout Latin America. “Certainly you cannot deny that your country has many pending debts with our country,” wrote Esquivel, who was tortured and detained without trial by the military junta. Esquivel on Friday hailed the declassification of more U.S. documents as an “act of good faith”.  Faced with the threat of anti-U.S. protests, Obama will meet Macri on March 23 and honor victims of the dictatorship era before spending the coup anniversary in the Patagonian city of Bariloche some 1,000 (1,600 km) miles away.

Summary: ओबामा की अर्जेंटीना यात्रा ने मैक्री अधिकारों के रिकॉर्ड पर सवाल उठाए


NEW YORK (Reuters) - Kerry Woolard, the 37-year-old manager of Trump Winery in Charlottesville, Virginia, went online in June and made her first political contribution: A $250 donation to the campaign of her boss, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Woolard’s donation was unusual. Only a dozen of an estimated 22,450 people employed at Trump’s companies have donated more than $200 to the celebrity businessman’s bid for the U.S. presidency, a Reuters review of federal campaign finance records through August shows. Those who gave less to either Trump’s campaign or his joint fundraising committees would not have shown up in the review.  The contributors, including an office cleaner, a golf course groundskeeper, a bartender and an attorney, have given $5,298 to Trump’s campaign, a fraction of the $112 million Trump’s political operation has received from donors and joint fundraisers. An employee at Trump enterprises gave $275 to the campaign of her employer’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. A 13th Trump employee, a lawyer at the Trump Organization, contributed to a Trump Super PAC, giving $1,000. “Honestly, I wish I could do more,” said Woolard, who addressed the Republican national convention in July and has attended private dinners with Trump, his wife Melania, and their son, Barron. “He is an amazing boss, has been a great leader and I believe would do a great job for our country.” Trump has made his business record central to his campaign. He often speaks about the thousands of jobs he has created and portrays himself as a dealmaker who drove hard bargains and avoided paying taxes to benefit his company, his family and his employees.  Those employees may vote for Trump on Nov. 8, and could be supporting his candidacy with smaller-dollar contributions that do not appear on the filings. But when it comes to putting more significant money toward Trump’s candidacy, his workers have shown little inclination to support their boss.        That stands in stark contrast to the 2012 election, when Mitt Romney, also an affluent businessman, was the Republican nominee. Employees at the private equity firm Romney led and then retired from in 1999, Bain Capital, and a separate company for which he worked, Bain & Company, donated nearly $375,000 directly to his campaign and through joint fundraising committees during a comparable period in the election cycle, FEC records show. Bain Capital employees gave an additional $1.125 million to Romney’s Super PAC. Clinton received $324,000 directly to her campaign and through her joint fundraising committee from employees at the State Department, where she served as secretary of state from 2009 until 2013, according to FEC filings through August. No State Department employee has given so far to Clinton’s Super PAC. A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, Hope Hicks, said in an emailed statement: “Mr. Trump has self-funded the majority of his campaign so the comparison is not realistic.”  A Trump Organization spokeswoman said: “While The Trump Organization is not political, there has been tremendous excitement and support for Mr. Trump from his employees, those that know firsthand he is an incredible leader.” After vowing to self-fund his campaign - and spending $47 million of his own money to defeat his primary challengers - Trump changed course once he secured the Republican nomination. Of the $112 million he raised, 43 percent came from people who gave $200 or less directly to his campaign.  A study published in September of companies on the Standard & Poor’s 1,500 stock market index found that employees’ political donations typically mirror those of their chief executive officers.  The study, conducted by business and finance professors at Arizona State University, Bocconi University in Milan and the Swiss Finance Institute in Zurich, found workers donated almost three times more money to candidates supported by their CEOs. The influence of the chief executives was particularly pronounced at firms that explicitly advocate for political campaigns. Reuters cross-referenced Trump’s federal financial disclosure records, which lists him as controlling more than 500 entities, including some based overseas, with FEC campaign finance data.  The FEC requires that political campaigns disclose the identities, addresses and employers of anyone who contributes $200 or more to Super PACs, a campaign or a joint fundraising committee, which typically coordinates fundraising between a political campaign and the party’s central organizing body. The estimate of Trump’s total employees, 22,450, comes from financial data intelligence provider PrivCo and includes some entities abroad. Federal election law stipulates that permanent residents and American citizens, including those working outside the United States, can donate to political campaigns. But foreign nationals working for Trump operations either in the United States or abroad cannot. Six of the 12 people who said they worked for Trump on campaign donation forms did not respond to multiple requests for comment on their home and business phones.  Two had phone numbers that are not in service, according to a background search database. One confirmed his employment and donation before hanging up the phone. Another confirmed her donation but said she needed clearance from the Trump Organization to comment.    The only two who discussed their donations with Reuters were Woolard, the Trump Winery manager, and Fred Laderer, an 81-year-old employee at Trump National Golf Club in North Carolina. Laderer made two donations to Republican political entities, of which $56 was earmarked for the Trump campaign.  Laderer, who schedules start times for golfers, said since Trump took over the North Carolina club “it’s a much better place to work. The members are much happier.”  Still, he added that he didn’t donate to Trump’s campaign because he works for the candidate, but because “Clinton would bring a lot of bad luggage.”

Summary: ट्रम्प के लापता दानदाताः वे लोग जो उनके लिए काम करते हैं


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. sanctions relief will be on the agenda when the Iranian and U.S. foreign ministers meet on Friday amid Tehran’s complaints it has been slow to benefit from last year’s Iran nuclear deal, the U.S. State Department said. Under the July 14 nuclear deal, formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran agreed to restrain its nuclear program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions that had crippled its oil-dependent economy. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif plan to sit down in New York on Friday, their second meeting this week. “I fully expect that they will continue to talk about the sanctions relief process and the degree to which banks, foreign and domestic, as well as institutions, foreign and domestic, are evaluating their options under the JCPOA,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters at his daily briefing. Kirby said representatives of the U.S. Treasury Department, which oversees many but not all U.S. sanctions on Iran, would not take part in the meeting, and he played down expectations that the talks would yield any concrete proposals. In addition, Kirby told reporters Washington did not share Tehran’s view that a U.S. Supreme Court decision that almost $2 billion in frozen Iranian assets must be turned over to American families of people killed in the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut and other attacks constituted “theft.”

Summary: केरी, जरीफ शुक्रवार को ईरान के लिए अमेरिकी प्रतिबंधों में राहत पर चर्चा करेंगेः अमेरिका


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton won the Puerto Rico Democratic primary on Sunday, moving her a step closer to prevailing over her rival, Bernie Sanders, in the fight for her party’s presidential nomination.  Clinton was the projected winner over Sanders in the U.S. island territory, according to NBC News. The win gives the former secretary of state a boost ahead of a big night on Tuesday, when six states, including New Jersey and California, will hold nominating contests. Clinton is hoping to cross the threshold of 2,382 delegates needed to secure the nomination for the Nov. 8 presidential election as early as 8 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, when polls close in New Jersey. She and Sanders, the U.S. senator from Vermont, are in a dead heat in California. But delegates in the state are awarded on a proportional basis, so even a loss there for Clinton would not be likely to stop her from securing her party’s nomination and a likely general election contest with presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. Ahead of Puerto Rico’s nominating contest, Clinton had been just 60 delegates shy of clinching the nomination, when including superdelegates, who consist of party leaders and elected senators, members of Congress and governors. Sanders is bracing for a prolonged fight that will run into the Democratic convention at the end of July. Networks reported huge voter turnout and long lines in Puerto Rico, with just over 430 polling stations open compared with over 2,000 in 2008.  The island is suffering through a severe debt crisis, which has hampered basic government services.

Summary: क्लिंटन ने प्यूर्टो रिको के डेमोक्रेटिक प्राइमरी में जीत हासिल कीः एनबीसी न्यूज


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The wealthiest Americans would benefit the most from President Donald Trump’s proposed tax cuts while many upper middle-income people would face higher taxes, independent experts said on Friday in the first detailed analysis of the plan. A U.S. Senate panel took Trump’s proposal, announced on Wednesday, a step forward by unveiling a budget plan for the coming fiscal year that acknowledges lost revenues from tax cuts, while Trump pressed ahead with selling the plan to the public. A report from the non-profit Washington-based Tax Policy Center found that in 2018, about 12 percent of taxpayers would face a tax increase of roughly $1,800 on average.  That includes more than a third of taxpayers making between about $150,000 and $300,000, mainly because most itemized deductions would be repealed including for state and local taxes, it said. Its analysis showed that the Republican tax proposal would fuel the growing federal deficit, providing $5.99 trillion in tax cuts while reducing federal revenues by a net $2.4 trillion in the next 10 years. Trump, who promised major tax cuts as a candidate, has called his proposal “a miracle for the middle class,” but the report concluded it would provide middle-income taxpayers uneven tax relief. In 2018, all income groups would see their average taxes fall, but some taxpayers in each group would face tax increases, it found. Taxpayers in the top 1 percent of incomes - above $730,000 - would receive about 50 percent of the total tax benefit from the tax overhaul, with their after-tax income forecast to increase an average of 8.5 percent, the group said. “The biggest share of people with increased taxes will be ... people who might be considered upper-middle-income people, high-income professionals, people whose income is between $150,000 and $300,000 in a year in 2017,” Tax Policy Center co-director Eric Toder said. The bottom 95 percent of taxpayers could expect a tax cut of 0.5 to 1.2 percent, according to the analysis.  The proposed tax cuts for corporations and small businesses would reduce federal revenue by $2.6 trillion over a decade and largely would benefit high-income taxpayers, it said. Trump, a real estate mogul-turned-politician, had pledged that the tax plan would not benefit the rich, himself included. The budget resolution released by the Senate Budget Committee, which would pave the way for Republicans to avoid potential Democratic procedural moves to block it, builds in $1.5 trillion in reduced revenue from tax cuts over the next decade. The White House and Republicans in Congress aim to have the tax proposal passed by the end of the year. Republicans control the White House, the Senate and both chambers of Congress. The resolution is vital to plans by the Republicans to move tax legislation through the Senate, which they control by a slim 52-48 majority, using a parliamentary process that lets them pass legislation without a customary 60-vote threshold that would necessitate some Democratic support. The proposal calls for slashing the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent, the small business rate to 25 percent from 39.6 percent and the top individual rate to 35 percent from 39.6 percent. Democrats call the tax plan a giveaway to the rich and corporations that would balloon the federal deficit. “The Senate Republican budget is the clearest sign yet that Republicans are intent on pursuing a tax plan that would blow a huge hole in the deficit and stack up debt, leading to cuts in programs that middle-class Americans rely on,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.  Trump talked up the tax proposal during a speech on Friday to the National Association of Manufacturers business lobbying group in Washington, calling it “a giant, beautiful, massive — the biggest ever in our country — tax cut.” “The biggest winners will be everyday working families, as jobs start pouring into our country,” Trump said. The U.S. national debt stands at about $20 trillion and the proposal provided few details on how to offset the federal revenues that would be lost with the tax cuts. Trump has failed to secure passage of any major legislation since taking office in January, with a healthcare overhaul collapsing in the Senate, money to build his promised wall along the border with Mexico failing to materialize and infrastructure spending legislation never getting off the ground.

Summary: ट्रंप की कर कटौती योजना से अमीरों को सबसे ज्यादा फायदा होगाः नीति समूह


(Reuters) - Co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and former Republican U.S. congressman Joe Scarborough said on Tuesday that he is leaving the Republican party and becoming an independent during an appearance on a late-night talk show. Scarborough and his co-host, Mika Brzezinski, appeared on “Late Show with Stephen Colbert” where he explained that his decision stemmed from his opposition to Republican President Donald Trump and his party’s unwillingness to speak out against the president and his policies.  “My party has betrayed their core values,” he told Colbert. “Time and time and time again they turned the other way. They are doing the same thing now. It’s actually disgusting.” Scarborough and Brzezinski, who are engaged, were embroiled in public argument with the Republican president two weeks ago. After Trump levied personal attacks against Brzezinski in a series of messages on social network Twitter, the pair responded with a searing opinion piece in the Washington Post that questioned his mental health. Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton last November in the most divisive presidential election in modern U.S. politics, in which a gulf between Republicans and Democrats has widened and  hardened over ideological positions on social and economic issues.

Summary: एम. एस. एन. बी. सी. के मेजबान ने रिपब्लिकन पार्टी छोड़ दी, स्वतंत्र हो गए


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May talked about ways to move towards peace in the Middle East in a phone call on Tuesday, the White House said.  The president and Prime Minister discussed next steps in forging peace in the Middle East,  the White House said in a brief statement that made no mention of Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital.  Both leaders also emphasized the urgency of addressing the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.  Trump also congratulated May on the decision by European Union leaders to move to the second phase of the Brexit negotiations, the White House said.

Summary: ट्रम्प, ब्रिटेन के राष्ट्रपति ने मध्य पूर्व में शांति के लिए बात की-व्हाइट हाउस


(Reuters) - A former Vietnamese official who Germany says was kidnapped in Berlin to face charges in Hanoi over financial losses at a state construction firm had been cleared of wrongdoing by the previous government, according to documents seen by Reuters. The decision to re-open the case and aggressively pursue prosecution shows the tougher stance taken by the ruling Communist Party since Vietnam s security establishment emerged stronger from a power struggle last year in which ex-Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung lost out.  The party says it wants to tackle corruption but some critics have accused Vietnam s rulers of embarking on a witch-hunt following the launch of investigations implicating increasingly senior figures. The internal crackdown drew global attention last month when Germany accused Hanoi of kidnapping Trinh Xuan Thanh, a former official with state oil firm PetroVietnam. He was accused of financial mismanagement that caused losses of $150 million at PetroVietnam Construction (PVC) during the time he served as chairman from 2009 to 2013. But according to a letter dated May 18, 2015 from then trade minister Vu Huy Hoang to then Prime Minister Dung, the official had stated his responsibility but the government had not  found negative signs  relating to his actions.  Therefore, authorized agencies and units agreed not to take disciplinary action over Thanh,  it said, noting that he had moved to a role at the trade ministry, where he had worked hard to try to resolve the problems at PetroVietnam Construction.  Corrective work and post-inspection handling of PVC were done effectively and in accordance with the prime minister s requirements,  the letter said. Responding to questions about the letter and whether there would be further prosecutions over the case, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang said the party and state were resolute in dealing with corruption or lawbreaking by any organization or individual.  Based on the results of the investigation, the functional agencies shall strictly handle those who violate the law in accordance with the provisions of Vietnamese law,  she told Reuters. Reuters was unable to contact Thanh, former trade minister Hoang or former prime minister Dung either directly or through government offices. Thanh ran PetroVietnam Construction, a subsidiary of a sprawling state enterprise that is also involved in everything from oil and gas to power generation, ship building and insurance. After his return to Vietnam, Thanh was shown on state television saying that he had decided to surrender himself in order to face justice. The government has not said how he returned home. Thanh was a relatively junior figure among those who are under investigation in relation to PetroVietnam s dealings as well as in the banking sector. The most senior political casualty so far is Dinh La Thang, a former PetroVietnam chairman who was sacked from his role in the politburo. A vice-minister who had been responsible for appointing Thanh has also been sacked. Hoang has also been symbolically stripped of his title of former trade minister for violating state and party rules. Investigations continue into PetroVietnam and the trade ministry which oversaw it as well as into the central bank. There are widespread expectations that more members of Dung s administration will be prosecuted. Dung lost out last year in the battle to secure the post of Communist Party General Secretary, Vietnam s most powerful position. The post remained in the hands of Nguyen Phu Trong, whose modest public profile contrasts with the conspicuous wealth that some members of Dung s administration displayed.  Fighting and preventing corruption, waste and negativity are no longer handled slowly and case by case. It has become a movement,  Trong said in July. According to a survey by Transparency International conducted between July 2015 and January 2017, Vietnam had become the most bribery prone country in Asia after India and a majority of Vietnamese believed corruption had worsened.

Summary: एक्सक्लूसिवः घोटाले से प्रभावित वियतनाम के अधिकारी को पिछली सरकार ने बरी कर दिया था


PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said in a statement broadcast on state television and Facebook on Thursday a general election planned for 2018 will go ahead, hours after the country s Supreme Court banned the main opposition party.  The elections will go as normal,  Hun Sen said.

Summary: कंबोडिया के प्रधानमंत्री हुन सेन का कहना है कि 2018 का चुनाव आगे बढ़ेगा


GREENVILLE, N.C., Va./WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump invoked religion, talked of unifying Americans and tried to raise doubts about whether Democratic rival Hillary Clinton can be trusted in a new campaign stump speech unveiled on Tuesday. “I will fight for Detroit, for Chicago, for Baltimore, and for every neglected part of this nation – and I will fight to bring us all together as one American people,” Trump told a packed rally in Greenville, North Carolina, in a departure from his typical bare-knuckled approach. On the Democratic side, both Clinton and her vice presidential running mate, Tim Kaine, blasted Trump. Clinton focused on Trump’s past bankruptcies and his refusal to release his tax records. “He clearly has something to hide. We don’t know exactly what it is, but we’re getting better guesses about what it probably is,” she said in Tampa, Florida. Kaine, in a national security speech in Wilmington, North Carolina, criticized Trump’s business dealings with Russia, the ties between some of his campaign advisers to the country and Trump’s suggestion that he hoped Russian hackers could find missing emails from when Clinton was secretary of state. “He has openly encouraged Russia to hack his political opponents and commit espionage against his own country,” Kaine said. Trump, in a speech on Wednesday in Cleveland, is to lay out a military preparedness plan in which he will call for rescinding mandatory defense spending cuts and embarking on a major military buildup.  The Trump campaign said the candidate will call for big increases in spending for new ships, planes, submarines and training combat troops and bolstering missile defense systems. Trump will also criticize Clinton for “military adventurism” for her handling of Libya and the Middle East as secretary of state. Trump, buoyed by polls showing him as gaining ground against Clinton, outlined what he would do on his first day as president if elected on Nov. 8, part of a new effort to inject more discipline into his free-wheeling campaign. He said he would suspend the resettlement of Syrian refugees into the United States, start toward repealing and replacing President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare plan, and begin the first steps toward building a wall along the U.S. southern border with Mexico. Trump, who rarely mentions religion, quoted from a Bible passage he read aloud at a black church in Detroit on Saturday, part of his effort to appeal to African-American voters. “Imagine what our country could accomplish if we started working together as one people, under one God, saluting one flag,” he added. “It is time to break with the bitter failures of the past, and to embrace a new American future.” But Trump was unflinchingly critical of Clinton over the latest disclosures from the Federal Bureau of Investigation about her use of a private email server and destruction of thousands of emails that she and her staff had deemed of a personal nature. At least two of her mobile devices were reported destroyed by a staff using a hammer and BleachBit software to wipe unwanted emails. “People who have nothing to hide don’t smash phones with hammers. People who have nothing to hide don’t bleach their emails or destroy evidence to keep it from being publicly archived as required under federal law,” Trump said. Kaine, in his first major policy speech since being tapped as Clinton’s running mate, drew a contrast between how Trump would approach U.S. relations with Russia and Clinton’s track record as head of the U.S. State Department from 2009 to 2013, during Obama’s first term as president. As head of the State Department, Clinton oversaw “hard-nosed negotiations” with Russia to reduce nuclear stockpiles and destroy Syrian chemical weapons, while still going “toe-to-toe” with Putin to protect America and NATO allies, Kaine said. “Trump seems to support Russian interests at the expense of American ones,” he added. Kaine’s speech began less than an hour after Trump concluded a campaign stop in Virginia Beach, in Kaine’s home state of Virginia, where he scoffed at the idea that Clinton would hold any sway over Putin’s actions.  “Putin looks at Hillary Clinton and he laughs. Putin looks at Hillary Clinton and he smiles,” Trump said. The back-and-forth occurred as the focus of the U.S. battle for the White House shifted to national security, with both Clinton and Trump set to participate in a televised forum on Wednesday hosted by a veteran’s group. Trump followed up his Virginia event by meeting with the wives of U.S. military personnel stationed at nearby installations. Setting aside his usual bombast, Trump turned soft-spoken and nodded attentively as the women, some of whom held babies on their laps, described their concerns about the quality of schools and finding jobs. “So much of this we can take care of,” Trump told them.

Summary: धर्म का आह्वान करते हुए, अधिक अनुशासित ट्रम्प एकता की बात करते हैं


SEOUL (Reuters) - A North Korean court sentenced two South Korean journalists and their publishers to death for  seriously insulting the dignity  of the country by reviewing and interviewing the British authors of a book about life in the North, its state media said on Thursday. North Korea has previously issued harshly worded accusations against South Korean entities and individuals for allegedly violating its dignity, by slandering its leadership and its political system. The book in English titled  North Korea Confidential  was authored by James Pearson, a Seoul-based correspondent for Reuters, and Daniel Tudor, former correspondent in South Korea for the Economist magazine. The book, based on interviews with North Korean defectors, diplomats and traders, depicts a growing market economy where ordinary North Koreans enjoy access to South Korea music and TV dramas, fashion and smuggled Chinese and American films. Pearson wrote the book, published in 2015, before joining Reuters. The Korean-language edition, published earlier this month with the title translated as  Capitalist Republic of Korea , was reviewed by South Korea s Dong-A Ilbo and Chosun Ilbo newspapers. A spokesman for the North s Central Court said in a statement carried by the country s official KCNA news agency that the book  viciously slandered the reality of the DPRK , the initials for North Korea s official name of the Democratic People s Republic of Korea. The book painted life in the country as increasingly capitalistic where money can buy power and influence, the spokesman said. The South Korean journalists who reviewed the book  committed a hideous crime of seriously insulting the dignity of the DPRK with the use of dishonest contents  carried by  North Korea Confidential , the court spokesman said. The Central Court has ordered the execution of the journalists, Son Hyo-rim of the Dong-A Ilbo and Yang Ji-ho of the Chosun Ilbo, and the publishers of the newspapers. It also demanded the South Korean government investigate their crimes and punish them, the state media said. The court statement did not make any mention of punishment for the book s authors. A Dong-A Ilbo representative said the newspaper declined to comment and its reporter Son did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Chosun Ilbo reporter Yang declined to comment while a newspaper representative could not be immediately reached for comment. Tudor, the co-author of the book, declined to comment. A Reuters spokeswoman declined to comment.  Dong-A Ilbo, Chosun Ilbo and other conservative media in South Korea have so far committed smear campaign against the DPRK nonstop,  KCNA quoted the court as saying.  The criminals hold no right to appeal and the execution will be carried out any moment and at any place without going through any additional procedures.

Summary: उत्तर कोरिया ने देश के बारे में पुस्तक की समीक्षा करने पर दक्षिण कोरियाई संवाददाताओं को मौत की सजा सुनाई


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Twitter on Tuesday that he believes Republican Senator Rand Paul, a vocal critic of the Republican healthcare plan, will change his mind and support the proposal. “I feel sure that my friend @RandPaul will come along with the new and great health care program because he knows Obamacare is a disaster!” Trump tweeted.

Summary: ट्रम्प का कहना है कि उन्हें यकीन है कि सीनेटर पॉल रिपब्लिकन स्वास्थ्य योजना का समर्थन करेंगे


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Friday he was considering tapping both current Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell and Stanford University economist John Taylor to serve in top posts at the U.S. central bank. “It is in my thinking, and I have a couple of other things in my thinking, but I like talent and they’re both very talented people,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business Network when asked about the possibility of having one serve as Fed chair and the other as a vice chair. “It’s a hard decision.”

Summary: ट्रम्प का कहना है कि पॉवेल और टेलर दोनों को फेड में सेवा देने पर विचार किया जा रहा है


DENVER (Reuters) - A Colorado talk radio host who once chaired the state Republican Party and has accused Democrats of widespread voter fraud has been charged with forging his ex-wife’s signature on a mail-in ballot in the 2016 election, court records showed on Wednesday. Steven Curtis, 57, who served as state GOP boss from 1997 until 1999, is charged with one felony count of forgery and one misdemeanor count of tampering with a mail-in ballot, according to a criminal complaint filed in Weld County District Court. The case stems from an inquiry lodged with the Weld County Clerk and Recorder’s Office by Curtis’s former spouse, Kelly Ireland, who contacted the agency in October to check on the status of her voter registration after the couple split. Ireland was informed then that a signed mail-in ballot bearing her name and voter information had already been submitted, according to Carly Koppes, an elected Republican who serves as the county clerk. “At that point, my office researched the situation further, and the signature was questionable, so we then contacted the District Attorney’s Office to start an investigation,” Koppes  told Reuters. If convicted, Curtis faces a maximum three years in prison for forgery and up to 18 months in jail and a $5,000 fine for ballot-tampering, said Tyler Hill, a spokesman for the district attorney. Curtis’s lawyer, Christopher Gregory, declined comment. The former Republican Party boss hosts a morning political talk show on conservative Denver radio station KLZ-AM called “Wake Up With Steve Curtis.” Curtis spoke about election tampering in a segment titled “Voter Fraud and Other Democratic Misbehaviors” on his Oct. 6, 2016 broadcast. “It seems to me, and correct me if I’m wrong, but virtually every case of voter fraud I can remember in my lifetime was committed by Democrats,” Cutis said, according to an archived podcast on the station’s website. Prosecutors allege that weeks after that broadcast, he forged his ex-wife’s ballot. A spokeswoman for Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams said the Curtis case is the only allegation of voter fraud in the state from the 2016 election cycle that has resulted in a prosecution. Curtis on Tuesday made his first appearance in court, where he was advised of the charges. A disposition hearing has been set for May, the District Attorney’s Office said. Republican President Donald Trump has claimed, without presenting evidence, that millions of illegal voters cast ballots in the 2016 election.

Summary: कोलोराडो रिपब्लिकन के पूर्व प्रमुख पर मतदाता धोखाधड़ी का आरोप


(Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said on Wednesday the House would fund a wall President Donald Trump wants to build along the U.S.-Mexico border. “We’re going to pay for it and front the money up,” Ryan said in an interview with MSNBC when asked who is going to pay for the wall. “There are a lot of different ways of getting Mexico to contribute to doing this,” Ryan said.

Summary: रयान का कहना है कि यूएस हाउस मेक्सिको सीमा की दीवार बनाने के लिए धन लगाएगाः एमएसएनबीसी साक्षात्कार


BEIRUT (Reuters) - France should know that Iran s missile program is not an issue that can be negotiated, Iran s foreign ministry spokesman, Bahram Qassemi, said in an interview with state media on Monday.  French official, other officials, who want to speak about Iran s affairs need to pay attention to the deep developments that have come to pass in the region in past decades and the big changes between the current situation and the past,  Qassemi said Monday, according to state media.  The Islamic Republic of Iran will definitely not negotiate on defense and missile issues.  Tension between Iran and France increased last month when  French President Emmanuel Macron said that Iran should be less aggressive in the region and should clarify its ballistic missile program.  His foreign minister also denounced, during a visit to Saudi Arabia, Iran s  hegemonic temptations . France could play a productive role in the Middle East by taking a  realistic and impartial approach , Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told Macron in a telephone call two weeks ago, according to Iranian state media. Iranian state media said Rouhani told Macron that the Islamic Republic was ready to develop its relations with France on all bilateral, regional and international issues based on mutual respect and shared goals.

Summary: फ्रांस को पता होना चाहिए कि ईरान की मिसाइलों पर समझौता नहीं किया जा सकताः प्रवक्ता


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Mike Lee of Utah will endorse Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz on Thursday, becoming the first member of the Senate to back Cruz, BuzzFeed News and Politico reported. Politico reported the pair would make the announcement later on Thursday at an event in Miami. Republican front-runner Donald Trump has slammed Cruz on the campaign trail for not having received any endorsements from fellow senators.  Lee’s office could not confirm the reports.    (Reporting by Emily Stephenson; Writing by Eric Beech) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production.

Summary: सीनेटर ली रिपब्लिकन राष्ट्रपति पद के उम्मीदवार क्रूज़ का समर्थन करेंगेः रिपोर्ट


MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and Egypt may sign an agreement on Friday allowing to resume Russian civilian flights to Egypt, the TASS news agency cited Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov as saying on Thursday. Egypt s aviation minister will travel to Russia on Thursday to sign protocol agreements to resume the flights that were suspended after the 2015 bombing of a Russian tourist jet, two ministry sources said in Cairo. Moscow halted civilian air traffic to Egypt in 2015 after militants detonated a bomb on a Russian Metrojet flight, downing the jet leaving from the tourist resort of Sharm el-Sheikh and killing 224 people on board.

Summary: मास्को, काहिरा शुक्रवार को मिस्र के लिए रूसी उड़ानें फिर से शुरू करने के लिए समझौते पर हस्ताक्षर कर सकते हैंः टीएएसएस


KOMOTINI, Greece (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan gave out toy cars and dolls to children on the final leg of a visit to Greece on Friday, a trip meant to boost ties but which has exposed the deep rifts between the two neighbors. Erdogan visited the Muslim community in Komotini, a town in northern Greece which once belonged to the Ottoman Empire. A day earlier, he riled his Greek hosts by suggesting the 130,000 Muslims in the region were discriminated against by Athens.  We have made very important decisions to meet the needs of our ethnically Greek citizens, and it is our right to expect similar behavior from Greece,  he told cheering crowds outside a school in the region. Turkey has frequently found fault with the appointment by Athens of local Muslim clerics - known as Muftis - instead of recognizing those elected by the local population. Erdogan is the first Turkish president to visit Greece in 65 years, but he has put Athens on the defensive by remarking that a decades-old treaty needs revision. The treaty, among other things, defines the boundaries between the two countries. None of that controversy was apparent on Friday, as hundreds of well-wishers gathered outside a mosque in Komotini to welcome Erdogan. Aides carried bags stuffed with toys, which Erdogan gave out to children. Some supporters shouted  Leader  as he made his way through the crowds. Greek police snipers were stationed on nearby buildings and security was tight.  Erdogan is very popular among the Muslim community in the area. He is an ordinary person close to the people,  said Ahmet Hoca, 57, a farmer. Closer to Istanbul than to Athens, this community in northern Greece sometimes feels uneasy with the disputes between the two countries, which range from airspace in the Aegean Sea to minority rights.  When someone asks you whom you love more, your mother or your father, what are you supposed to answer? You love them both,  said resident Hussein Kara, 64. After World War One and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne pushed modern Turkey s borders eastwards.  About 1.3 million ethnic Greeks, and 356,000 Turks, moved between Turkey and Greece in a population exchange. The deal excluded Muslim inhabitants of Western Thrace, which includes Komotini, and more than 200,000 Greeks then living in Istanbul. Fewer than 3,000 ethnic Greeks now live in Istanbul.

Summary: एथेंस को परेशान करने के बाद तुर्की के एर्दोगन ने उत्तरी ग्रीस में भीड़ को लुभाया


(Reuters) - The state of Hawaii said in a court motion on Tuesday that it intends to seek a temporary restraining order on Wednesday against President Donald Trump’s new executive order restricting travel from six Muslim-majority countries. The Trump administration this week issued the new executive order that supplanted an earlier, more-sweeping one which had been challenged in court by the state of Washington.

Summary: हवाई राज्य अदालत में ट्रम्प के नए आदेश को चुनौती देगाः अदालती दस्तावेज़


CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela has arrested Diego Salazar, a relative of former oil czar Rafael Ramirez, as part of an investigation into a money laundering scandal in Andorra, the South American country s state prosecutor said on Friday night. President Nicolas Maduro is overseeing what his administration calls a  crusade  against corruption in the member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Some 65 oil executives have been detained in a deepening purge that could also see the leftist leader consolidate his grip over the energy sector and sideline rivals. The Salazar case appears to relate to what the United States in 2015 said were some $2 billion in laundered funds from Venezuelan state oil company Petr leos de Venezuela, S.A. [PDVSA.UL], known as PDVSA, at the private bank Banca Privada D Andorra (BPA).  Saab did not specify Salazar s role or details on the money laundering, except that it involved around 1.35 billion euros in 2011 and 2012, but he said the case was bound to grow.   I want to highlight that this citizen will likely not be the only one detained and the only one investigated,  Saab said in a phone call to state television announcing the arrest.  The arrest is bound to cast the spotlight on Ramirez, who was the powerful head of PDVSA and the oil ministry for a decade before Maduro demoted him as a envoy to the United Nations in 2014. A protracted rivalry between Maduro and Ramirez has increased in the recent weeks, sources close to the situation said this week, especially after Ramirez wrote online opinion articles criticizing PDVSA s production slump and the government s handling of Venezuela s crisis-hit economy. Maduro sacked Ramirez, who was thought to have presidential ambitions, from his job this week and summoned him back to Caracas from New York, the people with knowledge of the situation said. Ramirez and PDVSA did not respond to a request for comment on Friday. Salazar could not immediately be reached for comment.

Summary: वेनेजुएला ने भ्रष्टाचार की जांच में शक्तिशाली पूर्व तेल मालिक रामिरेज़ के रिश्तेदार को गिरफ्तार किया


MANILA (Reuters) - A Philippine college fraternity used its annual naked run on Friday to protest against President Rodrigo Duterte s brutal war on drugs and the imposition of martial law in the south in the army s fight against Islamist militants. The masked and hooded young men sprinted in the nude through their college, holding signs reading  Lift Martial Law  and  Stop the Killings , as bystanders laughed and pointed and others took photos.  The level of violence in society is growing and the fraternity cannot simply ignore that, that thousands of people are dying , Alpha Phi Omega spokesperson Thomas Roca said, when asked why the fraternity picked the protest theme this year.   Since taking office last June, Duterte has launched a ferocious war of drugs that has left thousands of Filipinos dead, and in May, he imposed martial law in Mindanao, an island of 22 million people, when Islamic State-linked militants took over large parts of the city of Marawi. This is not the first time the fraternity has taken a political stance with its yearly bare-bottomed event.  The society used its naked run during the rule of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the 1980s to protest against the censorship of activists at the University of the Philippines. For a finale on Friday, the men gathered by a pond, arms slung over each other s shoulders, and lustily sang their fraternity song, alumni members in the audience joining in as well.   It s my first time seeing this , college student Haji Viado said, with a smile.  But for me what they did was effective to get people s attention on these issues.

Summary: खेल में त्वचाः फिलीपींस के छात्रों ने नग्न भाग में दुतेर्ते का विरोध किया


BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Elections for Iraq s Kurdistan region s presidency and parliament set for Nov. 1 will be delayed because political parties failed to present candidates, the head of the electoral commission Hendrean Mohammed told Reuters on Monday. Parties have been unable to focus on the elections because of turmoil that followed a referendum on Sept. 25 on Kurdish independence, a Kurdish MP said on condition of anonymity. Authorities in Baghdad as well as neighbors Iran and Turkey opposed the referendum that saw a clear independence majority.  Last week, Iraqi forces captured the oil city of Kirkuk and other territory claimed by the Kurds in retaliation for the referendum, dealing a severe blow to Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Masoud Barzani. The Kurdish electoral commission s Mohammed, speaking by phone from the KRG capital Erbil, in northern Iraq, said it is up to the Kurdistan region s parliament to fix a new date for the elections. The deadline to present candidates expired last week and was extended until Monday.  The current KRG presidency, held by Barzani since 2005, and parliament, elected in 2013, are expected to continue until new votes are held, he said. The loss of Kirkuk prompted calls from Gorran, the main opposition party to Barzani, for his resignation. Gorran, or the Change Movement, supports the right of Iraq s Kurds for self-determination but it opposed holding the referendum on Sept. 25, saying the timing was ill-chosen.

Summary: इराक के कुर्दिस्तान क्षेत्र ने चुनाव में देरी की


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump released a video on Monday laying out actions he will take on his first day in office on Jan. 20, including withdrawing the United States from a Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. Trump also said he would issue a rule cutting government regulations, direct the Labor Department to investigate abuses of visa programs, and cancel some restrictions on energy production, including shale oil and gas and coal.

Summary: राष्ट्रपति पद संभालने के पहले दिन ही प्रशांत व्यापार समझौते से अलग हो जाएंगेः ट्रम्प


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives Intelligence Committee called on the Trump administration on Wednesday to provide them with what they expect will be thousands of documents related to the investigation of Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election. The request may be an effort to avoid a repeat of an unusual document access arrangement made between the Senate Intelligence Committee and CIA to review information related to enhanced interrogation techniques at secret overseas “black site” prisons during the George W. Bush administration. Under that arrangement, Senate investigators were limited to reviewing documents on a shared computer network set up at a Central Intelligence Agency facility, which later led to accusations the agency had spied on the work of congressional staffers. “It will not be adequate to review these documents, expected to be in the thousands of pages, at the agencies. They should be delivered to the House Intelligence Committee to provide members adequate time to examine their content,” Representatives Devin Nunes, the committee’s Republican chairman, and Adam Schiff, its top Democrat, said in a joint statement.     They said they expect “prompt” responses to requests for documents. U.S. intelligence agencies contend that Moscow waged a multifaceted campaign of hacking and other actions to boost Republican President Donald Trump’s election chances against Democrat Hillary Clinton last year. Trump has worried lawmakers, mostly Democrats but also some Republicans, by dismissing such claims and criticizing intelligence agencies for raising them. They have demanded special committees to investigate, but Republican congressional leaders said they would leave that work to existing committees. Trump’s fellow Republicans control majorities in both the Senate and House. The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican Richard Burr and Democrat Mark Warner, issued a statement late on Tuesday saying their committee was also moving forward with its investigation. Moscow has repeatedly denied any attempt to help Trump win.

Summary: अमेरिकी सांसदों ने रूस की चुनाव जांच पर दस्तावेज मांगे


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two senior lawmakers on the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee  on Monday pushed for information regarding sharp price increases for EpiPens, drug-filled injectable devices used by people to counter potentially deadly allergic reactions.  Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote Mylan Chief Executive Heather Bresch on Monday to ask how Mylan determined the price of EpiPens and what changes had been made to the product to account for the higher price. The top Democrat on the committee’s antitrust subcommittee, Senator Amy Klobuchar, urged the Federal Trade Commission on Monday to investigate the prices, citing news reports showing that the price of a pack of two EpiPens had gone from $100 in 2008 to $500 this year. Mylan acquired the product in 2007. “Although the antitrust laws do not prohibit price gouging, regardless of how unseemly it may be, they do prohibit the use of unreasonable restraints of trade to facilitate or protect a price increase,” wrote Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat who said her daughter relies on an EpiPen. “The FTC should investigate whether Mylan Pharmaceuticals engaged in activity, such as using incentives or exclusionary contracts with insurers, distributors, or pharmacies, to deny an alternative product access to the market.” An EpiPen injects a pre-measured dose of epinephrine (adrenaline) that people use if they are having a dangerous allergic reaction. The FTC did not say whether an investigation was under way. “The commission takes seriously its obligation to take action where pharmaceutical companies have violated the antitrust laws,” a spokesman said. Mylan did not immediately comment on the letters but noted in an email that nearly 80 percent of people with commercial insurance who use a savings card can get the medicine for free. “With changes in the healthcare insurance landscape, an increasing number of people and families are enrolled in high deductible health plans, and deductible amounts continue to rise. This shift has presented new challenges for consumers, and they are bearing more of the cost,” Mylan also said. The FTC opened a probe into Turing Pharmaceuticals for possible antitrust violations in connection with the company’s decision to sharply raise the price of a life-saving drug. Turing had raised the price of Daraprim to $750 a tablet from $13.50.

Summary: अमेरिकी सांसदों ने एपिपेन की कीमतों में वृद्धि पर माइलान पर दबाव डाला


SEOUL (Reuters) - On an icy December day in 2011, North Korea s new leader Kim Jong Un was accompanied by seven advisers as they escorted the hearse that carried his father, Kim Jong Il, through the streets of Pyongyang. None of the men remain with the young Kim. This October, he demoted the last of his father s aides, both men in their nineties. They were among around 340 people he has purged or executed, according to the Institute for National Security Strategy, a think tank of South Korea s National Intelligence Service (NIS). Kim,  obviously a madman  in the eyes of U.S. President Donald Trump, has completed a six-year transition to what the South calls a reign of terror. His unpredictability and belligerence have instilled fear worldwide: After he tested a  breakthrough  missile earlier this week, he pronounced North Korea a nuclear power capable of striking the United States. But a closer look at his leadership reveals a method behind the  madness.  At 33, Kim Jong Un is one of the world s youngest heads of state. He inherited a nation with a proud history, onto which a socialist state had essentially been grafted by Cold War superpowers to create a buffer between Communist China and the capitalist South. Under Kim s father, the economy was mismanaged, and the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union eliminated an important source of support. Up to three million people starved. To consolidate a weak position, the young leader has been cultivating three main forces: military and nuclear power, a tacit private sector market economy, and the fear and adoration of a god. To this end, he has executed two powerful men and promoted one young woman   Kim Yo Jong, his younger sister, who Korea-watchers say is also Kim s chief propagandist. She is Kim s only other blood relative to be involved in politics: His elder brother, Kim Jong Chol, was rejected by their father as heir. Over the five years to December 2016, Kim spent $300 million on 29 nuclear and missile tests, $180 million on building some 460 family statues, and as much as $1 billion on a party congress in 2016   including $26.8 million on fireworks alone, according to the Institute, which employs high-level defectors.  Yes, he has replaced many top commanders and officials so easily and ruthlessly killed some of them, which could make you wonder if he s sane,  said Lee Sang-keun, a North Korean leadership expert at the Institute of Unification Studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.  But this is a historical way of governing that can put you in power for a long time.  (Graphic - Kim family tree: tmsnrt.rs/2AJM8F1) (Graphic - Purge and launch: tmsnrt.rs/2ApSfhC) In ancient days, Pyongyang was the capital of a mighty empire, Koguryo, the root of the modern word  Korea.  Going back through history, the Great Leader concept is a blend of several ideas handed down through time: an almighty god, the Confucian worship of a parent, and a king with the Mandate of Heaven, according to Lee Seung-yeol, a senior researcher at the National Assembly Research Service in Seoul. Lee, a leading North Korea leadership researcher, said the state s theory of succession means Kim the younger s rise should have been completed while his father was alive: Kim s father was anointed 20 years before he took over, giving him time to build allies and a leadership system. Kim Jong Un had just three years as leader-in-waiting. Born in 1984, he was third in line for power and a fractious, competitive child, according to Kenji Fujimoto, a Japanese chef who worked for the family and one of the few people to recount meetings with the young Kim. In his memoirs published in 2010, Fujimoto, who now runs a sushi restaurant in Pyongyang, said Kim once snapped at his aunt Ko Yong Suk for calling him  Little General.  Kim wanted to be called  Comrade General.  When Kim Jong Il knew his young son would soon succeed him, researchers have said, the father took several measures to protect the boy. Lee said these included shifting the country s power base to create rivalry between the elites so Kim the younger could play one group off against another. Kim Jong Il had declared the military the country s supreme power   a policy known as songun, which means  military first.  At a party conference in 2010, he changed the setup so the military had to compete with the party administration for the leader s favour. Military strategy was the first thing Kim changed. His father had used the promise of nuclear disarmament as a bargaining chip for aid, and in February 2012, young Kim started in his father s footsteps, promising to freeze North Korea s nuclear program in return for food aid from the United States. But weeks later he changed tack, saying North Korea would fire a long-range rocket.  The negotiations were carried on as the legacy of Kim Jong Il,  said Wi Sung-lac, a former South Korean envoy to talks in 2011 that contributed to the February deal.  Since then his strategic thinking has shaped up.  In Kim s view, Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya were fatally weakened by not having nuclear weapons, North Korean media say.  History proves that powerful nuclear deterrence serves as the strongest treasured sword for frustrating outsiders  aggression,  the official KCNA news agency said in an editorial in January 2016. North Korea is racing to achieve a nuclear deterrent because the state feels threatened, worrying particularly that Kim may face a fate like Gaddafi. The Libyan leader agreed in 2003 to eliminate his weapons of mass destruction; in 2011, he was killed by rebels that the United States and its allies had supported.   Months after Kim s accession, North Korea updated its constitution to declare itself a nuclear weapons state. One leading pallbearer at Kim Jong Il s funeral was Ri Yong Ho, Chief of the General Staff of the Korean People s Army. Kim sacked him in July 2012. South Korean intelligence later confirmed that Ri had been executed. By December 2012, North Korea had carried out another, successful, rocket test. In 2013, Kim outlined a new policy: The  byungjin line,  or parallel development, to combine the nuclear buildup and economic growth. A nuclear deterrent is essential to that, says Thae Yong-ho, North Korea s former deputy ambassador to London, who staged a high-profile defection to South Korea in 2016. The threat of absolute destruction makes a nuclear bomb a  poor man s weapon  with which to tighten control of the country and ensure long-term rule, Thae said.  Once he has assumed control of usable nuclear weapons, he has more room to allocate resources more flexibly, and allocate the military forces for civilian construction,  said Thae. North Korea spends about a quarter of its GDP on defense: Russia s President Vladimir Putin has said Kim Jong Un would have his people  eat grass  rather than give up its nuclear program. But with a legacy of famine, Kim also says he wants to boost people s prosperity.  The former chef, Fujimoto, said that on one summer break from school in Switzerland in 2000, the young Kim was preoccupied with a visit to Beijing his father had made.  Let s talk,  Fujimoto recalled the future leader saying over drinks on his father s private train.  I hear from higher up that China seems to be succeeding on many fronts   engineering, commerce, hotels, agriculture - everything,  Kim said.  In many ways, don t we need to take them as a model example for us?  In 2012, shortly after taking power, Kim went a small way to mimic reforms China made in the 1980s. Farmers were allowed to keep most of the harvest. State enterprises were given the right to buy and sell at market prices and to hire and fire workers. Private entrepreneurs and traders were encouraged to invest in state projects or with party and military entities. Kim also began to turn a blind eye to informal markets   a force his father tried in vain to contain. That April, Kim addressed the nation - the first time in 17 years North Koreans had heard the voice of their leader.  It is the party s steadfast determination to ensure that the people will never have to tighten their belt again,  he said. Outsiders hoped the reform signaled a new political openness as Kim drove to promote the North in the world: In 2012 Antonio Razzi, an Italian senator for Forza Italia who calls himself the only Italian to have met the leader, said Kim had asked him to find training facilities for soccer players in Italy.  I have talked with many (North Korean) local leaders,  Razzi said.  They have no plan to attack anybody. North Korea is interested in nuclear only as a form of defense.  Kim worked to ensure the economic freedom would not unseat him. Also escorting his father s funeral car in 2011 was Jang Song Thaek, an administrator at the vanguard of the reforms. He was married to Kim Jong Il s sister, was a special envoy to China and had overseen a host of new Special Economic Zones all over the country.  In December 2013, Jang was hauled out of the Politburo in front of the cameras and accused of plotting a coup.  Jang dreamed such a foolish dream,  state media said, adding Jang hoped his reformist plans would help him  get  recognized  by foreign countries.  Jang was shot  dozens of times  by an anti-aircraft gun and his remains removed with a flamethrower, according to South Korea s National Intelligence Service (NIS)   an account no one has confirmed.  From that point on, Kim honed his personality cult. On the day Jang s purge was announced, North Korea s official daily the Rodong Sinmun unveiled a song dedicated to Kim Jong Un, titled  We Know Nothing But You.  More were to follow. The next year, Kim also ordered school textbooks be revised to focus on idolization of himself and include images of nuclear weapons and missiles, according to the NIS-affiliated Institute for National Security Strategy. The idolization campaign kicked into high gear in 2016, focused on pop culture and youth: Kim s chosen female singers, the Moranbong Band, staged a series of musical performances and plays calling for loyalty to the leader, while the Shock Brigade, a crew of young North Koreans in charge of major economic construction, produced about 1,200 poems and other literary works, the Institute said.  He has linked his own legitimacy to improving the economic situation in the country,  said John Delury of Seoul s Yonsei University.  Kim Jong Un wants to become a development dictator.  At home, he casts himself as a bringer of plenty. In 2015, almost half the times he was photographed were at economic events, data from Seoul s Unification Ministry shows. Only this year, as his weapons tests multiplied and met an angry response in the United States, have military appearances come back into prominence. Standing tearfully behind Kim Jong Un at their father s funeral was his younger sister, 28-year-old Kim Yo Jong. On the same October day that Kim dropped the last two of his father s aides, he included her in his Politburo. Kim Jong Chol, their elder brother, leads a quiet life in Pyongyang where he plays guitar in a band, according to former ambassador Thae.   I think Kim Jong Un has been making good use of the existing system, while strengthening his power base and dictator regime in a very shrewd manner,  said Lee Su-seok, a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Strategy.

Summary: किम जोंग उन के 'पागलपन' के पीछे की सोच


BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The Catalan parliament s declaration of independence has changed nothing and the European Union will only deal with the central government in Madrid, the president of the European Council Donald Tusk said on Friday. Catalonia s parliament declared independence from Spain in defiance of the Madrid government, which at the same time was preparing to impose direct rule over the region.  For EU nothing changes. Spain remains our only interlocutor,  Tusk said on Twitter. Tusk also urged Spain to favor  force of argument, not argument of force.

Summary: कैटलोनिया की स्वतंत्रता की घोषणा से यूरोपीय संघ में कोई बदलाव नहीं आयाः टस्क


TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Mike Pence reassured Japan of American commitment to reining in North Korea’s nuclear and missile ambitions on Tuesday, after warning that U.S. strikes in Syria and Afghanistan showed the strength of its resolve. Pence arrived in Tokyo from South Korea, where he assured leaders of an “iron-clad” alliance with the United States in the face of the reclusive North, which has conducted a series of missile and nuclear tests in defiance of U.N. sanctions. “The era of strategic patience is over and while all options are on the table, President (Donald) Trump is determined to work closely with Japan, with South Korea, with all our allies in the region and with China to achieve a peaceable resolution and the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” Pence said in Tokyo before lunch with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.  Pence and Abe agreed that they needed to persuade China to play a larger role in dealing with North Korea, a Japanese government spokesman said. North Korea regularly threatens to destroy Japan, South Korea and the United States and it showed no let-up in its belligerence after a failed missile test on Sunday, a day after putting on a huge display of missiles at a parade in Pyongyang. North Korea’s deputy representative to the United Nations, Kim In Ryong, accused the United States on Monday of creating “a situation where nuclear war could break out an any time” and said the North’s next nuclear test would take place “at a time and at a place where our headquarters deems necessary”. North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Han Song-Ryol told the BBC that missiles would be tested on “a weekly, monthly and yearly basis”.  The North has warned of a nuclear strike against the United States if provoked. It has said it has developed a missile that can strike the mainland United States, but officials and experts believe it is some time away from mastering the necessary technology, including miniaturizing a nuclear warhead. Pence said on Monday the world had seen Trump’s resolve in the past two weeks, with a U.S. missile attack on a Syrian airfield and the dropping of a powerful non-nuclear bomb on Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan. The Trump administration has said military action remains an option for dealing with North Korea. But, mindful that this would likely trigger massive retaliation and casualties in South Korea and Japan, U.S. officials say Trump’s main focus is on tougher economic sanctions. U.S. officials say tougher sanctions could include an oil embargo, a global ban on North Korea’s airline, intercepting cargo ships and punishing Chinese banks doing business with Pyongyang. They also say greater Chinese cooperation is vital. Susan Thornton, acting U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia, said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and China’s top diplomat, State Councillor Yang Jiechi, agreed in a phone call on Sunday on the need for strict enforcement of U.N. resolutions. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi repeated China’s line that the crisis could only be resolved by diplomacy. “I’ve seen that the United States has reiterated it is willing to use political and diplomatic means to resolve this, as this is their first choice,” he told reporters in Beijing. “Of course I think that any country will feel that political diplomatic means are of course the first choice,” Wang said.  Pence’s economic discussions in Tokyo will be closely watched to see how hard a line Washington is prepared to take on trade. Trump campaigned on an “America first” platform, and has vowed to narrow big trade deficits with nations such as China and Japan. However, Trump has also shown willingness to link trade to other issues, saying he would cut a better trade deal with China if it exerts influence on North Korea. China banned imports of North Korean coal, its most important export, in February, and Chinese media have raised the possibility of restricting oil shipments to the North. But North Korea used Chinese-made trucks to display missiles at the military parade on Saturday, according to photographs, underlining the difficulty in enforcing U.N. sanctions. China and North Korea maintain “normal contacts, including normal business contacts”, said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang, when asked about the trucks. “At the same time, as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, China strictly adheres to its international responsibilities, including those from Security Council resolutions,” Lu told a daily briefing. Impoverished North Korea and the rich, democratic South are technically still at war because their 1950-1953 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. South Korea hosts 28,500 U.S. troops to counter the threat from the North. Trump’s decision to launch a missile strike against Syria, a Russian ally, drop a giant bomb on Afghanistan and stick with Obama-era policies on Crimea mean Russian hopes of him befriending the Kremlin have been on the slide. Russian state media, which hailed his election win, have made a U-turn. On Sunday, media said he was scarier than North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. For a graphic on nuclear North Korea, click here For a graphic on Carl Vinson strike group, click here

Summary: पेंस ने जापान को उत्तर कोरिया पर चीन के साथ काम करने के अमेरिकी संकल्प का आश्वासन दिया


ALMATY (Reuters) - When Uzbek writer Nurulloh Muhammad Raufkhon s new book came out last year, security forces raided his home and put the author - who was in Turkey at the time - on their blacklist, effectively forcing him to stay there in exile. Now, after being removed from the list by the new government, the 62-year-old Raufkhon plans to return to his Central Asian homeland - despite harboring some misgivings. A safe return of prominent dissidents such as Raufkhon might herald a genuine thaw in Uzbekistan and mark a significant step toward restoring ties with the West and attracting foreign investment after decades of political and economic near-isolation under the late President Islam Karimov. No prominent dissidents have returned home yet though since Karimov died a year ago and Raufkhon said some of his fellow emigres were still unconvinced it was safe to do so. Raufkhon s book, entitled Bu Kunlar (These Days), was a critique of Uzbekistan s development since it became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991. By publishing it, he went against a well-established taboo on criticizing Karimov, who ran the nation of 32 million with an iron fist from 1989, first as a Communist apparatchik and then as an elected leader. He died in September last year from a stroke aged 78.  They all but made me an  enemy of the people ,  traitor of the motherland ,  Raufkhon, who lives in Istanbul, said in an interview with Reuters conducted by email and telephone. Last month, the government of Shavkat Mirziyoyev, a former prime minister who has succeeded Karimov, removed some 16,000 people, including Raufkhon, from its security blacklist. That prompted him to start thinking about a return home. But he had second thoughts very soon - and he is still slightly apprehensive of possible action by a Karimov  old guard .  After they removed me from the blacklist, somebody decided to put up a list of wanted criminals with photos in the district where I am registered,  he said.  My name was among them.  Local officials quickly corrected the mistake and covered up his photo, he said, but the incident all the same made him uneasy.  I didn t understand this. Do we have a parallel state?  he said.  (But) in the end, I dismissed this as a mistake and decided to return. To address mistakes like that you need to be back home.  Raufkhon said there could be more setbacks.  Of course, it is impossible to swiftly change a regime based on violence,  he said, adding that a  Karimov-era elite  was strongly resisting reforms. One of the new government s moves that has raised eyebrows  was the sacking last month of Khurshid Mirzohidov, a reformist chief executive of state television company MTRK. Mirzohidov, previously minister for information technology development, was appointed to MTRK in February as part of a broad reshuffle which followed Mirziyoyev s election last December. A major change brought on by Mirzohidov was a series of Q&A sessions broadcast live on national television in which senior officials had to answer tough questions - such as those about the use of forced labor in cotton harvesting. After Mirzohidov was sacked, Alisher Khajayev, who had run state television under Karimov, took back the top job. Though live broadcasts have continued after the reshuffle, Khajayev has yet to show he will maintain the same probing TV programs as Mirzohidov. Speaking of fellow emigres, Raufkhon said:  They would have come back in an instant, but what stands in their way is uncertainty about what is going to happen to them upon return.  He urged the government to amnesty all opposition activists and guarantee their safety upon return. Raufkhon said he would announce the date of his own return this week.

Summary: उज़्बेक लेखक ने निर्वासन से सावधानीपूर्वक वापसी की योजना बनाई


BANGKOK (Reuters) - The bones and ashes of Thailand s late King Bhumibol Adulyadej were brought to their final resting places on Sunday, the fifth and last day of an elaborate funeral ceremony that drew hundreds of thousands of mourners to the streets of Bangkok. King Bhumibol, the world s longest reigning monarch when he died last year at the age of 88, ruled Thailand from shortly after World War Two and was revered as a stabilizing figure through coups, protests and natural disasters. The $90 million royal funeral drew mourners clad in black from across the country to Bangkok, where King Bhumibol was cremated on Thursday in an elaborate gold crematorium built for the ceremony outside the Grand Palace. (Interactive Graphic   tmsnrt.rs/2leWzcQ) Over 19 million Thais - more than a quarter of the 69 million population - participated in ceremonies by presenting symbolic sandalwood flowers to be burned at temples and crematorium replicas across the country, according to the government.  On Sunday, the late king s bones were moved to the Chakri Throne Hall, where royal relics are kept within the Grand Palace in a ceremony that involved senior monks from temples across the country. His son, new King Maha Vajiralongkorn, led the religious rite. On Sunday evening, Princess Sirivannavari Nariratana led  the final royal procession on horseback to the Wat Rajabopidh and Wat Bovoranives temples where her grandfather s ashes were placed in keeping with a ceremony steeped in religious symbolism and tradition. Mourners, some in tears, were gathered outside the temples.  I will always have him stored in my heart. Whether as pictures, however old and torn, the memory of him will always be kept in my heart,  said Chalermporm Prabutr, 72.    Wat Rajabopidh was built by the late king s grandfather, King Chualalongkorn, and houses the remains of other royals including the late king s father, Prince Mahidol and the princess mother, Srinagarindra. Some of the late king s ashes were also be laid at Wat Bovoranives, the temple where he entered the monkhood in 1956 after his grandmother s death, a custom for Buddhist males after the death of a relative.  Wat Bovoranives is also the center of the more austere strain of Thai Buddhism founded by the late king s great grandfather, King Mongkut. Many Thais have worn black for the past year in mourning for King Bhumibol. The military government has told people to wear bright clothes from Monday, when the mourning period formally ends.

Summary: पाँच दिवसीय समारोह के अंत में थाई राजा के पार्थिव शरीर का अंतिम संस्कार किया गया


BEIRUT (Reuters) - Shelling killed three people in the last major rebel stronghold near Damascus on Tuesday, a war monitor said, shortly before the UN Syria envoy said the government had agreed a ceasefire there.  Russia had on Monday proposed a ceasefire in the besieged Eastern Ghouta area on Nov. 28-29. U.N. Syria envoy Staffan De Mistura later said Russia had told him that the Syrian government had accepted the idea, but he added  we have to see if it happens . The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the war monitor, said there were three deaths and 15 injuries from Tuesday s shelling, but that it was less intense than in previous days. A witness in the area said that while the shelling was lighter earlier in the day, it had intensified later.  A Syrian official said the situation on Tuesday was calm. The UN s humanitarian agency OCHA said in a Tweet that relief teams had entered Eastern Ghouta with food and health supplies for 7,200 people, entering through Nashabiyeh on the opposite side of the pocket from where the fighting was.  Over the weekend, government air strikes and shelling on Ghouta intensified, killing at least 43 people on Sunday and Monday, the Observatory said. Syrian state media said 13 shells hit government-held areas of Damascus on Monday.    Eastern Ghouta is one of several  de-escalation  zones across western Syria where Russia has brokered ceasefire deals between rebels and President Bashar al-Assad s government. But fighting has continued there.       U.N.-backed peace talks in Geneva are set to begin on Tuesday. The government delegation will arrive on Wednesday to attend the talks, state news agency SANA reported. The opposition delegation, the Syrian Negotiation Commission, called for direct negotiations with the government instead of the previous model of each side speaking only to UN mediators.  M decins Sans Fronti res, the international medical humanitarian organization, said on Monday hundreds of people had been wounded in intense bombing and shelling of the Eastern Ghouta in the last two weeks. It said five MSF-supported field hospitals in East Ghouta had treated 576 wounded patients and recorded 69 deaths, with a quarter of the wounded women or children under the age of 15. In a statement, MSF said its figures did not account for the total numbers killed in the area as there are other medical facilities it does not support regularly.

Summary: दमिश्क में गोलाबारी, संघर्ष विराम से पहले तीन की मौत


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When Hillary Clinton attended her first major White House meeting on Russia in February 2009, the new secretary of state insisted that she wanted to play a leading role in President Barack Obama’s effort to “reset” U.S. relations with Moscow. But while Clinton became implementer-in-chief for one of Obama’s signature first-term initiatives, she was consistently more skeptical than most of his top aides about how far Russian leader Vladimir Putin was prepared to go in turning the page, according to current and former U.S. officials. That stance is indicative of how she would go about dealing with Moscow if she is elected U.S. president on Nov. 8, aides to both Clinton and Obama told Reuters. With U.S. relations with Moscow already plumbing post-Cold War lows, the aides and veteran Russia watchers said she would likely take a harder line than Obama or Republican nominee Donald Trump, who has praised Putin as a strong leader. Dealing with Putin, who is flexing his geopolitical muscle from Ukraine to Syria to cyberspace, will be among Clinton’s biggest foreign policy challenges — one made more daunting by the personal bad blood between them. Jake Sullivan, a former top State Department aide and now senior Clinton campaign advisor, said Clinton could consider the shipping of lethal arms to Ukraine government forces and the creation of no-fly or safe zones in Syria. Obama has rejected both ideas. While such moves could further stoke tensions and might even face resistance from some U.S. allies, Sullivan said in an interview with Reuters that Clinton could manage ties with Russia effectively because Putin would “respect her as U.S. president, her strength, her clarity, her predictability.” According to current and former Clinton advisers, she could consider other policy moves such as stiffer sanctions against Russia over Ukraine and doing more to wean Russia’s neighbors off reliance on Moscow’s energy supplies. Russia is watching warily. “She is not perceived by many people as the Kremlin’s preferred candidate,” said Andrey Kortunov, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, a think tank close to the Russian Foreign Ministry. “Many here believe that she would be tougher on Russia than Obama,” he said.  Clinton’s first fence-mending effort in March 2009 was not so much a show of strength than of diplomatic clumsiness. She handed Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a red button that was supposed to have the word “reset” on it. Instead, it was labeled with the Russian word meaning “overcharged.” Clinton’s distrust of Putin deepened, mirrored by his growing list of grievances against her. By the time she prepared to leave the State Department in early 2013, former officials said, she wrote at least two confidential memos to Obama urging a more hard-nosed approach. At the time, many in the president’s inner circle were not convinced the reset had run its course, they said. Since Clinton’s departure, Putin has reasserted Russia on the world stage, seizing Ukraine’s Crimea region and intervening militarily in Syria’s civil war. U.S. officials have linked the hacking of Democratic Party computers to the Russian government – which the Kremlin denies. Like most national security policies under Obama, the attempt to “reset” U.S.-Russian relations was managed from the White House by the president himself, along with aides from his 2008 campaign, including Russia specialist Michael McFaul. “No one should pretend that this wasn’t an Obama-driven policy,” said Philip Gordon, Clinton’s top Europe adviser at the State Department. “But it’s also not as if she went grumpily to the table and was told by the president ‘you’re doing it’ ... She thought it had logic.” McFaul, who later became ambassador to Russia, said in an interview that from the first White House meeting on Russia in early 2009 Clinton was skeptical of the prospects for transforming U.S.-Russian relations in a way that “some of us aspired to back then.”  Two other officials backed up his account.  The first fruits of the reset were promising. Putin had - temporarily, it turned out - stepped down as   president, with the younger, reform-minded Dmitry Medvedev in his place. Obama and Medvedev signed a new strategic nuclear arms control pact, cooperated to sanction Iran for its nuclear program and agreed to let U.S. troops and equipment transit Russia to support a American military “surge” in Afghanistan.  But after little more than two years, the “reset” ran out of steam. By mid-2011, it was clear that Putin was returning to the presidency. Clinton first met Putin at his residence outside Moscow in March 2010. She persuaded him to back tougher U.N. sanctions on Iran, according to two people with knowledge of the session. In front of the TV cameras, however, Putin railed against U.S. trade and economic policies as Clinton watched. Clinton and Putin have been exchanging broadsides for nearly a decade. Putin, a former KGB agent, “doesn’t have a soul,” Clinton quipped on the eve of the 2008 New Hampshire presidential primary, riffing off of President George W. Bush’s comment seven years earlier that he had looked into Putin’s eyes and seen his soul. The Russian leader retorted: “At a minimum, a head of state should have a head.” A U.S. official who was involved in Russia policymaking said Clinton sometimes chose her words poorly, inflaming Russian resentment over its perceived post-Cold War humiliation, a nationalist strain that Putin has long used to his advantage.  “She played into that,” said the official, who requested anonymity.  The most serious rift of Clinton’s tenure occurred in late 2011, as crowds filled the streets of Russian cities protesting parliamentary elections marred by allegations of voting fraud. Clinton, in a statement approved by the White House, called the election “neither free nor fair.” Putin, who was preparing to retake the presidency, accused her of trying to foment a new Russian revolution. A steady slide in contacts between Clinton and the Russian leadership and in overall relations followed. “Secretary Clinton’s views on Russia were always a little harder-edged than President Obama’s,” said John Beyrle, Obama’s first ambassador to Moscow. That partly reflected a “splitting up of responsibilities,” he said. Obama cooperated with Medvedev; Clinton grappled with Lavrov and Putin. Some Russia watchers say Clinton’s record was mixed. “The reset was the right approach,” said Thomas Graham, former Russia adviser under Bush’s Republican administration. But he faulted Clinton and Obama’s team for not doing more to “actively reach out to Putin and open lines of communication.”

Summary: रूस के बारे में संदेह करने वाली, क्लिंटन को पुतिन के साथ पैर की उंगलियों पर चलते देखा गया


NEW YORK (Reuters) - Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross stood behind Republican Donald Trump but urged him to stop engaging in exchanges that benefit the Democrats and make the real estate mogul’s behavior the issue in the U.S. presidential campaign.  “This election is Donald’s to lose and so far the Democrats have been clever about baiting him and he generally has bitten,” Ross said in an email to Reuters late on Wednesday. Ross said Trump’s reaction in recent days to criticism by the parents of a Muslim U.S. Army captain killed in the Iraq war “has enabled the Democrats to turn the table and instead of the behavior of the quintessential Washington insider being the issue he is in danger of letting the Democrats make his behavior be the issue.” Ross added, “I assume this will change soon.” A spokeswoman for Trump did not respond to requests for comment. Ross, who has made billions of dollars betting on bankruptcies and distressed assets, is a critic of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s trade views. The comments by Ross are the latest by Republican politicians and supporters expressing concern over the Trump campaign ahead of the Nov. 8 election against Clinton. Groups of wealthy Republicans unhappy with Trump have been privately courting prominent peers to join them in backing Clinton.  Meg Whitman, a prominent Republican fundraiser, endorsed Clinton on Tuesday.

Summary: निवेशक विल्बर रॉस ने ट्रम्प से अपने व्यवहार को मुद्दा नहीं बनने देने का आग्रह किया