WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a highly unusual intervention, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson plans to remove Iraq and Myanmar from a U.S. list of the world’s worst offenders in the use of child soldiers, disregarding the recommendations of State Department experts and senior U.S. diplomats, U.S. officials said. The decision, confirmed by three U.S. officials, would break with longstanding protocol at the State Department over how to identify offending countries and could prompt accusations the Trump administration is prioritizing security and diplomatic interests ahead of human rights.  Tillerson overruled his own staff’s assessments on the use of child soldiers in both countries and rejected the recommendation of senior diplomats in Asia and the Middle East who wanted to keep Iraq and Myanmar on the list, said the officials, who have knowledge of the internal deliberations. Tillerson also rejected an internal State Department proposal to add Afghanistan to the list, the three U.S. officials said. One official said the decisions appeared to have been made following pressure from the Pentagon to avoid complicating  assistance to the Iraqi and Afghan militaries, close U.S. allies in the fight against Islamist militants. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity. Foreign militaries on the list can face sanctions including a prohibition on receiving U.S. military aid, training and U.S.-made weapons unless the White House issues a waiver. Human rights officials expressed surprise at the delisting, which was expected to be announced on Tuesday, the officials said, as part of the State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report. A State Department official said the TIP report’s contents were being kept under wraps until its release and the department “does not discuss details of internal deliberations.” The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Under the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008, the U.S. government must be satisfied that “no children are recruited, conscripted or otherwise compelled to serve as child soldiers” in order for a country to be removed from the list and U.S. military assistance to resume. In the lead-up to Tuesday’s report, the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, which researches the issue and helps shape U.S. policy on it, along with its legal office and diplomatic bureaus in Asia and the Middle East concluded that the evidence merited keeping both countries on the list, the officials said. Officials said that although the report had been finalized there was always the possibility of last-minute changes. Human Rights Watch said removing Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, from the list would be a “completely premature and disastrous action that will effectively betray more children to continued servitude and rights abuses.” The decision also would put the Trump administration at odds with the United Nations, which continues to list the Myanmar military, along with seven ethnic armed groups, on its list of entities using and recruiting child soldiers. “What’s particularly astonishing is this move ignores that the U.N. in Burma says that it is still receiving new cases of children being recruited” by the Myanmar military, said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. Rights groups have long accused Myanmar of using child soldiers. Bordering both China and India, Myanmar is also of growing strategic importance to the United States at a time of increasing encroachment in the region by China, which has sought closer relations with its neighbor. Iraq, which has received more than $2 billion in U.S. arms and training over the last three years, was added to the State Department’s “Child Soldier Prevention Act List” in 2016. However, the flow of U.S. assistance has continued. Former President Barack Obama handed out full or partial waivers regularly, including last year to Iraq, Myanmar, Nigeria, South Sudan and others out of 10 countries on the list. Last year’s State Department report said some militias of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), an umbrella group of mostly Shi’ite Muslim factions with ties to the Iraqi government and backed by Iran, “recruited and used child soldiers.” The report said that despite the PMF being funded by the government, Baghdad struggled to control all of its factions. “The government did not hold anyone accountable for child recruitment and use by the PMF and PMF-affiliated militias.”     Human Rights Watch said in January that it had learned that militias had been recruiting child soldiers from one Iraqi refugee camp since last spring.     The broader TIP report, the first of Trump’s presidency, is sure to be closely scrutinized for further signs that under his “America First” approach there will be little pressure brought to bear on friendly governments, especially strategically important ones, for human rights violations at home. The Obama administration, while more vocal about political repression around the world, also faced criticism from human rights groups and some U.S. lawmakers that decisions on annual human trafficking rankings had become increasingly politicized.

Summary: एक्सक्लूसिवः इराक, म्यांमार को बाल सैनिकों की सूची से हटाएगा अमेरिका


LONDON (Reuters) - An improvised explosive device exploded on a packed rush-hour commuter train in London injuring 22 people on Friday in what police said was the fifth terrorism incident in Britain this year. Here is what we know about the incident: Emergency services said they were called to reports of a fire on a train at Parsons Green station in West London at 8.20 a.m. (0720 GMT).  The train was traveling from Wimbledon in south London toward the city center during the morning commuter rush-hour. There were reports in local media that there had been an explosion and people suffered facial burns at 8.40 a.m. At 10.15 a.m., police declared they were treating it as a terrorism-related incident. The London Ambulance service said they had taken 18 people to hospital following the incident, which witnesses say prompted a stampede to leave the train. None of the casualties are suspected to have sustained serious injuries. The National Health Service said others had taken themselves to hospital, bringing the total number treated to 22. London fire brigade said six fire engines, two fire rescue units and about 50 firefighters were in attendance. British Prime Minister Theresa May will chair a meeting of the national security committee at 1.00 pm (1200 GMT).     Britain s top counter-terrorism officer said the blast was the result of an improvised explosive device. Pictures shared on social media showed embers burning from  a white bucket which had been wrapped in a plastic shopping bag. Wires were protruding from the bucket and witnesses described an acrid smell filling the carriages. A former Ministry of Defence Head of Counter-Terrorism told Sky News it  looks a pressure cooker device that has malfunctioned.  The broadcaster also reported that the device did not fully detonate. The Metropolitan Police s counter terrorism unit is leading the investigation into the incident, with support from the British Transport Police.  Mark Rowley of the Metropolitan Police said the intelligence services were supporting the police response. There have been no details or information about any suspects who might be linked to the blast. Rowley would not be drawn on whether the attacker was on the train at the time of the explosion.  It s very much a live investigation, and we re following down the lines of enquiries,  Rowley said. He did not comment when asked if he had any idea who did it.

Summary: लंदन ट्रेन बम के बारे में अब तक हम क्या जानते हैं


KINSHASA (Reuters) - At least four civilians and a police officer were killed in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Monday in clashes between security forces and protesters demanding the departure of President Joseph Kabila this year, Human Rights Watch said. The national electoral commission announced this month that an election to replace Kabila, whose mandate expired last December, cannot take place until April 2019. The delay has raised fears of an escalation of violence in Congo, which is Africa s biggest copper producer. Activist groups in the eastern city of Goma had called for a general strike on Monday to protest against the election delay. Unrest broke out by 5 a.m. (0300 GMT) between police and protesters, who barricaded roads and burned tires, local residents and the police said. Security forces killed at least four civilians and one police officer also died in the clashes, said Ida Sawyer, central Africa director at New York-based Human Rights Watch.  A spokeswoman for the U.N. mission in Congo said it had documented 37 arrests but could not yet confirm a death toll. Provincial police commissioner Placide Nyembo said that the police officer was beaten to death by protesters and one demonstrator was killed by a stray bullet.  The police also said in a statement that they broke up a planned demonstration in the northern province of Tshopo by protesters with jerrycans filled with petrol.  Deteriorating security across Congo this year, including a spike in militia violence, has prompted fears the country could slip back to the multi-sided civil wars of the turn of the century, when hundreds of thousands were killed in violence and millions are believed to have perished of hunger and disease.  Kabila says the election delays are due to challenges registering millions of voters. His opponents say he plans to change the constitution to remain in power, as other African leaders have done.

Summary: पूर्वी कांगो में झड़पों में कम से कम पांच लोगों की मौतः ह्यूमन राइट्स वॉच


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate will delay its consideration of healthcare legislation while Arizona Republican Senator John McCain recuperates from surgery, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Saturday. McCain’s absence cast doubt on whether the Senate would be able to pass the legislation to dismantle and replace Obamacare.  McConnell needs 50 “yes” votes for passage in a chamber the Republicans control by a 52-48 margin. “While John is recovering, the Senate will continue our work on legislative items and nominations, and will defer consideration of the Better Care Act,” McConnell said in a statement.  The announcement came after McCain’s office said he would remain in Arizona next week following a procedure to remove a 2-inch (5-cm) blood clot from above his left eye. Repealing and replacing President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law was a top campaign promise for President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress. But two Republican senators have already declared their opposition to revised legislation unveiled on Thursday. McCain has expressed concern about the healthcare bill but has not said how he would vote.   The 2008 Republican presidential nominee, McCain was resting comfortably at home in good condition after Friday’s operation, his office said.   “There are few people tougher than my friend John McCain, and I know he’ll be back with us soon,” McConnell said. McCain’s surgeons removed the clot during a minimally invasive craniotomy through an incision in the 80-year-old lawmaker’s eyebrow.  Tissue pathology reports would be available within the next several days. “Thanks to @MayoClinic for its excellent care — I appreciate your support & look forward to getting back to work!” McCain, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on social network Twitter  late on Saturday.

Summary: सीनेट ने स्वास्थ्य सेवा मतदान में देरी की क्योंकि मैक्केन सर्जरी से ठीक हो गए


SEOUL (Reuters) - Punters in North Korea who once risked three years hard labor for gambling are now able to bet on local horse races as the isolated country scrambles to unearth new sources of hard currency amid intensifying international sanctions. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been building resorts, swimming pools and other luxurious leisure facilities in what experts say is a bid to capture some of the individual wealth generated by growing private markets for goods and services. A series of races took place at the Mirim Horse Riding Club, one of Kim s flagship leisure developments, near Pyongyang on Sunday, according to North Korea s official KCNA news agency. Race goers aged 12 or older were allowed to bet on jockeys in a raffle-type system, broadcaster Korean Central Television said on Friday ahead of the races. Pictures from KCNA showed hundreds of spectators watching and filming with their phones as a field of mostly white-grey horses and their riders stormed out of the starting gate. In the communist North, horses - especially white ones - have traditionally been a propaganda symbol associated with the ruling Kim family.       Kim has been pushing for vanity projects for a theme park, sky resort and the horse riding club for the sake of propping up the people s well-being but their real purpose was to earn foreign currency,  said Na Jeong-won, head of the North Korea Industry-Economy Research Institute in Seoul.  North Korea s access to foreign currency has been impacted by a series of international sanctions over its nuclear weapons program, including bans on key exports such as coal, textiles and seafood. Lee Sang-keun, a researcher at the Institute of Unification Studies of Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said the primary target for the leisure facilities is affluent North Koreans.   You may have ridiculed Kim Jong Un for constructing lavish facilities while struggling to feed the people, but those things are to make foreign currency, not from foreigners but from the well-offs inside North Korea because you have to pay in U.S. dollars or Chinese renminbi there,  said Lee.   Many North Koreans make lots of money from the market, dine at hamburger restaurants and go shopping, all of which help fatten regime coffers. That s part of the reason why the regime still has some financial latitude despite international sanctions.  North Korea has already been operating casinos for foreigners in Pyongyang and Rason, where it jointly runs a special economic zone with China. Last March, the government sent out investment proposals for new casinos in Namyang, near the border of China, and the Mount Kumkang region, home to a scenic tourist resort just north of the border with South Korea. The United Nations  latest round of sanctions, however, bans any further joint ventures with North Korean companies. Third generation leader Kim developed the Mirim riding club by transforming a military horseman training center in 2012 and visited the site several times until its formal unveiling a year later, KCNA has reported. The Mirim riding club has an indoor training facility, seven outdoor riding courses, a pavilion, restaurants and a sauna, as well as 120 horses including 67 famous Orlov Trotters from Russia, according to the website of Uri Tours, a U.S.-based agency specialized in guided trips through the North. The entrance fee is $35, which covers one-hour of horse riding with an instructor, riding gear and sauna.  The fee could be lower for North Koreans, reportedly at around $10 - still a hefty sum for many impoverished locals.  There seems to be growing demand for such leisure activities among North Koreans as the gap between the rich and the poor has been widening,  said Na.

Summary: नकदी के लिए जॉकीः उत्तर कोरिया ने प्रतिबंधों के कारण रेसट्रैक जुआ खेलने की अनुमति दी


HANOI (Reuters) - Heavy rain in northern and central Vietnam triggered floods and landslides that killed 46 people and 33 people were missing in the worst such disaster in years, the search and rescue committee said on Thursday. Vietnam often suffers destructive storms and floods due to its long coastline. More than 200 people were killed in storms last year.  In the past 10 years, we haven t suffered from such severe and intense floods,  state-run Vietnam Television quoted agriculture minister Nguyen Xuan Cuong as saying. A typhoon tore a destructive path across central Vietnam just last month, flooding and damaging homes and knocking out power lines. The latest floods hit Vietnam on Monday.   Our entire village has had sleepless nights...it s impossible to fight against this water, it s the strongest in years,  a resident in northwestern Hoa Binh province was quoted by VTV as saying. Vietnam s Central Steering Committee for Natural Disaster Prevention and Control said authorities were discharging water from dams to control water levels. Some 317 homes had collapsed, while more than 34,000 other houses were submerged or had been damaged. Earlier reports said more than 8,000 hectares (19,800 acres) of rice had been damaged and around 40,000 animals were killed or washed away. Hoa Binh province in the northwest declared a state of emergency and opened eight gates to discharge water at Hoa Binh dam, Vietnam s largest hydroelectric dam, the first time it has done so in years, VTV reported. Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc visited northern Ninh Binh province where water levels in the Hoang Long river are their highest since 1985. Rising sea levels are also threatening Vietnam s more than 3,260 km (2,000 mile) coastline, resulting in increased flooding of low lying coastal regions, erosion and salt water intrusion. Floods have also affected seven of 77 provinces in Thailand, Vietnam s neighbor to the west, the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation said on Thursday. More than 480,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) of agricultural land have been hit, the department said. Thailand is the world s second-biggest exporter of rice.  It is still too soon to tell whether there will be damage to rice crops because most of the rice has already been harvested,  Charoen Laothamatas, president of the Thai Rice Exporters Association, told Reuters. In 2011, Thailand was hit by its worst flooding in half a century. The floods killed hundreds and crippled industry, including the country s key automotive sector.

Summary: वियतनाम में बाढ़, भूस्खलन से 46 लोगों की मौत, हजारों लोगों को सुरक्षित स्थानों पर पहुंचाया गया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. Senator Rob Portman on Thursday said he opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal in its present form, dealing a significant blow to the pact a day after officials from 12 countries signed it. Portman, from Ohio, said the Pacific trade deal fails to meet the needs of his state’s workers because it lacks an enforceable provision to fight currency manipulation and because of new, less-stringent country-of-origin rules for auto parts. “I cannot support the TPP in its current form because it doesn’t provide that level playing field,” Portman said in a statement. While approval of the trade pact is a top priority of President Barack Obama this year, his final year in office, it faces stiff opposition from many of his fellow Democrats in Congress. Meanwhile, Republicans have begun voicing concerns with specific provisions and are indicating that they are in no rush to bring the deal to a vote. Besides insisting that portions of the sweeping pact be renegotiated, some Republicans worry that bringing TPP to a vote before the November elections could hurt the chances of some of their incumbents running in swing states or congressional districts. Portman is seeking a second term in an industrial state where many workers blame job losses on previous trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He is expected to face a stiff challenge from former Democratic Governor Ted Strickland. The 12-nation deal would liberalize trade from Chile to Japan, representing 40 percent of the world economy.

Summary: रिपब्लिकन सीनेटर पोर्टमैन ने वर्तमान रूप में टी. पी. पी. व्यापार समझौते का विरोध किया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Hillary Clinton’s unexpected defeat in Michigan has laid bare growing voter anger over international trade, raising warning flags for her ahead of a possible presidential election showdown against Republican front-runner Donald Trump. Trump has built his campaign on pledges to scrap international trade deals and do more to protect American workers from foreign competition, tapping the same groundswell of discontent that propelled Clinton’s rival Bernie Sanders to victory in the Midwestern state on Tuesday. Clinton remains heavily favored to win the Democratic nomination. But the setback in Michigan could signal further troubles in upcoming primaries in other Rust Belt states such as Ohio, forcing her further to the left on economic issues and possibly influencing her choice for an eventual running mate, strategists said. The backlash against 20 years of trade liberalization has stalled the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a sweeping Pacific trade deal backed by President Barack Obama and threatens to stymie the trade agenda for years to come. “It’s politically radioactive to support free trade right now,” said Greg Valliere, a Washington analyst for Horizon Investments, a financial firm. Clinton’s troubles with her party’s left wing — and with white, working class voters more generally — may steer her toward a trade skeptic such as Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio as a vice presidential running mate, said Democratic strategist Steve Jarding. Political pundits had expected Clinton to pick someone to increase her appeal to Hispanic or other minority voters, such as U.S. Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro. Sanders, 74, is unlikely to end up as Clinton’s running mate, partly due to his age, Democrats said. Both Sanders, a democratic socialist, and billionaire Trump have harnessed anti-trade sentiment in their insurgent White House bids, criticizing deals like NAFTA as job killers that have depressed the living standards of working Americans. Exit polls from Michigan, a hub of the U.S. auto industry, show widespread voter skepticism on trade that may have helped Sanders and Trump win their respective party primaries.  “She made a fundamental mistake early on in this campaign to try to stay in the center,” Democratic strategist Steve Jarding said of Clinton. “This cycle, there is no center.” Sanders campaigned heavily against foreign trade in a state that has been hammered by overseas competition since the 1980s. Some 58 percent of his supporters in Michigan exit polls said that trade takes away U.S. jobs, while a slight majority - 53 percent - of Clinton backers said trade creates U.S. jobs. The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, estimates that Michigan would lose 5 percent of its jobs if TPP were to take effect, the highest proportion of any state. Gary Hunley, a substitute teacher in Dearborn, Michigan, said he believed Clinton was partially to blame for stagnant wages because NAFTA was enacted under her husband Bill Clinton’s presidency in the 1990s. “She was not a passive first lady,” Hunley said. Clinton’s stance on trade is more nuanced than Trump’s and Sanders’. After NAFTA was enacted, she voted against a free-trade deal with Central America while serving as a U.S. senator in the following decade. As Obama’s secretary of state, Clinton helped negotiate the TPP with Japan, Vietnam and other Pacific Rim countries.  As a presidential candidate, Clinton has said after reading the final language of the deal she would vote against it because it does not adequately protect U.S. workers.  Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told reporters Wednesday there were no plans to adjust her stance and that he would “put Secretary Clinton up against any candidate in this race on trade,” including Trump.  Despite backing by the Obama administration, Republican lawmakers and many business groups, Republican leaders in Congress have shown no sign that they will bring TPP up for a  vote this year. The Obama administration says the deal has high labor and environmental standards that were not part of NAFTA. “I’m not sure that has fully been absorbed in the public mindset,” U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice told Reuters. [L1N16H1VJ] The deal may fare no better under the next president. Sanders and Trump oppose TPP, and Senator Ted Cruz, who is in second place in the Republican contest, has said he would not vote for it this year. “They’ve listened to the public and politicians have caught up with the public on this,” Brown, the Ohio Democratic senator, told Reuters. The evidence that the TPP would help the U.S. economy much is less than conclusive. The Peter G. Peterson Institute, a pro-trade think tank, estimates that it would boost economic growth by just 0.5 percent after 15 years. The deal would not boost employment overall, but would result in a “churn” of 53,700 jobs lost and created each year, and it would boost incomes by 0.5 percent, the institute found.  Another estimate by the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University found the trade deal would slow growth by 0.54 percent after 10 years and cost 448,000 jobs in the United States.  (Additional reporting by David Lawder, Amanda Becker, Valerie Volcovici, Richard Cowan, Roberta Rampton and John Whitesides; editing by Stuart Grudgings) 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: क्लिंटन की मिशिगन में आश्चर्यजनक हार ने उनके लिए व्यापार पर जोखिमों को उजागर किया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. small business community on Tuesday wrote to lawmakers urging them to step up efforts to roll back regulation introduced in the wake of the 2007-09 financial crisis that they say has stymied lending, dampening economic growth and job creation. The letter, sent to all U.S. Congressmen by more than 100 state and local chambers of commerce and seen by Reuters, highlights frustration among Main Street businesses which have yet to benefit from President Donald Trump’s pledge to ease access to credit by slashing financial rules. Extra bank capital and liquidity requirements introduced by the 2010 Dodd-Frank law have slowed the flow of credit and seen many services and products for small businesses eliminated, the chambers wrote, citing Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation data.   “We believe Congress should develop common-sense reforms for community, mid-size and regional banks, which would help empower Main Street businesses. We urge you to make such legislation a priority,” the chambers wrote. The letter is likely to increase pressure on Democrats in the Senate to support a bipartisan bill unveiled by the Republican-led Senate Banking Committee on Monday that would offer some relief to community and regional banks by reducing the threshold at which they are considered systemically risky. That bill, which marks the first concrete congressional step toward rolling back Dodd-Frank, has nine Democratic co-sponsors, but Republicans will need to win over a handful of extra Democratic votes to be certain of its passage. Talks on the bill have dragged on for months, with Democratic lawmakers wary of appearing to offer handouts to big Wall Street banks. But they are growing more sympathetic to the idea of relaxing rules for small and regional lenders in order to make life easier for small businesses and entrepreneurs - especially with mid-term elections in 2018 looming, lobbyists said. David Hirschmann, president and CEO, Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which coordinated the letter, said there was a growing “crescendo” among Democratic lawmakers on the regulatory relief issue.  “A year ago with a Democrat president in the White House, you could not get nine Democrats to support even common-sense reforms like this. So what’s changed? Is it because they want to help Trump? No. It’s because they’re hearing about this from home. That’s what’s causing these Democrats to come forward and to say, ‘We need to fix this’,” he said. “There is a real understanding that if we don’t enable the banks, we are not going to have the small business lending we need. This is not a Wall Street issue; it’s a Main Street issue,” he added.

Summary: अमेरिकी छोटे व्यापारिक समुदाय ने बैंक ऋण राहत पर कांग्रेस को धक्का दियाः पत्र


ANKARA/LONDON (Reuters) - Iran s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a military force with political clout and an industrial empire, stands to benefit from heightened tension between Washington and Tehran, officials and analysts said. President Donald Trump broke ranks with other major powers earlier this month by disavowing Iran s compliance with a 2015 multinational nuclear deal, complicating life for foreign investors nervous of possible new U.S. sanctions. The IRGC, which reports directly to Iran s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, began rapidly expanding its commercial interests a decade ago, before U.S. and EU sanctions were imposed on Iran s oil and finance sectors in 2012 over the country s nuclear program. It controls businesses ranging from ports management to telecommunications and has made the most of both cooling and warming ties with the West. When Western oil companies vacated energy projects in Iran after 2012, the Guards took them on; after the penalties were lifted in 2016, the IRGC, through front companies, served as a conduit for foreign business flowing into Iran. If investors are put off again, the IRGC is ready to step in, said an official from Khamenei s camp.  We want foreign investors to stay, but if they leave because of (U.S.) pressure, the Guards can easily replace them. There is no better alternative,  the official said, declining to be named because he was not authorized to speak to media. Under sanctions, Iran s clerical rulers rewarded the Guards by showering them with contracts for skirting the restrictions as well as for suppressing dissent at home and helping Tehran s regional allies from Iraq to Lebanon. The IRGC s lack of technical expertise and concern over the viability of its economic ventures under sanctions meant it later welcomed pragmatist President Hassan Rouhani s deal that eased sanctions in return for curbs on the nuclear program. Khamenei, a hardliner who holds ultimate authority on matters of state in Iran, guardedly endorsed the nuclear accord but has said Rouhani s economic follow-through has fallen short. To bypass existing unilateral U.S. sanctions, which bar any business with the Guards and its affiliated firms, many of the IRGC s front companies are not even formally owned by the Guards, but by individuals and firms linked to it.  Rouhani has tried to encourage reluctant major European firms and banks to return to Iran by seeking to curb the Guards  involvement in the economy, which led to the IRGC transferring ownership of some companies to the state. In recent months, the IRGC, which sees itself as a bulwark against Western influence, has responded by criticizing Rouhani for viewing foreign countries as the key to economic growth.  The IRGC will be the main beneficiary of the tension with Washington ... In order to protect its economic dominance, the  IRGC prefers only limited opening to the West,  said a Western diplomat who follows Iran closely. While backing the nuclear deal, Europeans share Washington s concern over Iran s ballistic missile program and  destabilizing  regional behavior. The IRGC has vowed to accelerate the disputed missile program and Iran s Shi ite militia proxies have made big military gains in recent months in Syria and Iraq, part of a decades-old tussle for influence in the Middle East with Sunni powers. Tehran emphasizes its role in battling Islamic State. Many foreign firms remain hesitant to invest in Iran for reasons including lingering unilateral U.S. sanctions imposed over human rights violations and alleged Iranian links to terrorism, and the dominant role of the IRGC in the Middle East s second largest economy. Among European firms that have announced big deals in Iran since last year are planemaker Airbus AIR.PA, French energy group Total TOTF.PA, and Germany s Siemens SIEGn.DE. Planemaker Boeing is the only U.S. company that has been granted direct access to the Iranian market with a deal to sell 110 plans to two Iranian carriers.  But Trump s hawkish new approach towards Tehran, coupled with banking worries and domestic political turbulence in both countries, are causing growing uncertainty over Iran s plane deals. Iranian officials have acknowledged publicly that major international companies are still wary of providing finance for Iran-related business, fearing potential fines resulting from existing U.S. sanctions, which include a ban on dollar related trade with the country. Iran needs the equivalent of billions of dollars in investment to revitalize industries including oil and gas and develop sectors held back by a lack of Western financing and the wide economic influence of the IRGC. These factors have all added to the difficulties faced by foreign investors looking to tap Iran s market.      The commercial issue is the turbulence that Trump creates,  Andreas Schweitzer, managing director with London-based M&A and investment advisory firm Arjan Capital Ltd, which has been investing in Iran since 2009. He said transactions were nevertheless still taking place, including in the automotive, energy and industrial sectors, in the one hundred million to two hundred million euros sphere. Merger and acquisition deals were among them, he said.  We keep the same mindset as of 2009   we assume the worst case, including that the Revolutionary Guards could be sanctioned, although we don t deal with them and if sanctioned parties are involved somewhere we won t touch the transaction or the company. We are and remain very cautious and so far we never have had a problem.  Following Trump s speech, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he planned to impose new sanctions on the Guards and would work with international counterparts on the issue. Charles Blackmore, chief executive of London-based due diligence specialists Audere International, which is active in Iran, said the policy shift by Washington would have  an adverse effect upon the more risk adverse investor .  For those who are already invested and know the country well, this will not make a blind bit of difference,  he said.      There are enough issues at the moment making people aware of how much of the economy is controlled by shadow shareholdings and opaque structures of the IRGC.      The survival of the nuclear deal is up to the U.S. Congress, which has 60 days to decide whether to reimpose broad sanctions on Iran. The U.S. administration has said Washington will not stand in the way of European trade and business transactions with Iran. Matthew Oresman, counsel with law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, who advises companies on Iran compliance issues, said Washington had considerable power and leverage to disrupt trade with Iran if that served its national security interests.  But the European governments have ways to dampen this and protect their businesses if they so desire,  he said. (This story has been refiled to correct typo in acronym IRGC)

Summary: ट्रम्प के सख्त रुख से ईरान के सुरक्षा बलों को बढ़ावा मिल सकता है


(Reuters) - Highlights of the day for U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration on Monday: Fourteen million Americans would lose medical insurance by next year under a Republican plan to dismantle Obamacare, the nonpartisan U.S. Congressional Budget Office says in a report that dealt a potential setback to Trump’s first major legislative initiative. A Republican plan to repeal taxes set under Obamacare would benefit the wealthiest U.S. households at more than five times the rate for middle-income families, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. The U.S. Department of Justice asks for more time to respond to a request from lawmakers for evidence about Trump’s allegation that then-President Barack Obama wiretapped him during the 2016 election campaign. A group of states renew their effort to block Trump’s revised temporary ban on refugees and travelers from several Muslim-majority countries, arguing that his executive order is the same as the first one that was halted by federal courts. Trump’s meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been pushed back from Tuesday until Friday because of the winter storm bearing down on the northeastern United States, the White House says. Ahead of her trip to Washington, Merkel tells business leaders in Munich that free trade is important for both the United States and Germany. Trump is planning to host Chinese President Xi Jinping at a two-day summit next month, according to media reports, as his administration seeks to smooth relations with the world’s second-largest economy. Trump’s Middle East envoy and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet in Jerusalem as the new administration tries to restart peace talks with the Palestinians. Trump is set to formally announce a review of vehicle fuel efficiency rules locked in at the end of the Obama administration when he meets with automaker chiefs this week, according to two sources briefed on the matter. Trump on Thursday unveils his 2018 budget emphasizing a military buildup, and some Republicans are concerned they will be forced to choose between opposing the president or backing reductions in popular programs such as aid for disabled children and hot meals for the elderly. The U.S. Senate confirms Trump’s pick to run the government health programs for the elderly, poor and disabled, Medicare and Medicaid, filling a critical role as Republicans fight to repeal and replace Obamacare.

Summary: हाइलाइट्सः ट्रम्प प्रेसीडेंसी 13 मार्च को रात 9.05 बजे ईडीटी


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump declined on Friday to explain what he meant when he described a gathering of military leaders as “the calm before the storm,” but the White House said he was not just being mischievous when he made the remark. Pressed about what he meant by Thursday’s comment, the U.S. leader declined to elaborate, telling reporters only that, “You’ll find out.” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders also declined to say what Trump meant.  When asked whether Trump was just being mischievous, Sanders denied he was just “messing with the press.” “I think we have some serious world issues here. I think that North Korea, Iran both continue to be bad actors and the president is somebody who’s going to always look for ways to protect Americans,” Sanders said. Leon Panetta, a former Defense secretary and CIA director, said Trump’s remarks would be something “you’d really worry about” under a previous U.S. president. But he said Trump’s comments appeared to follow a pattern he’d established on Twitter. “You begin to assume that it’s more about getting attention than it is about proclaiming some kind of national policy. I don’t think it’s responsible...but I think in this instance  we probably all should take a deep breath and try to assume he’s just making a play for attention,” Panetta told CNN. “There is no indication that there is a strategy or a policy behind that statement,” he added.  Trump made the “calm before the storm” comment during a photo opportunity before having dinner with U.S. military leaders and their wives. The dinner followed a meeting in which Trump and the military leaders discussed Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan and the fight against Islamic State. The president also appeared to criticize the military leaders on Thursday for moving too slowly to provide him advice. “Moving forward, I also expect you to provide me with a broad range of military options, when needed, at a much faster pace. I know that government bureaucracy is slow, but I am depending on you to overcome the obstacles of bureaucracy,” he said. Asked if Trump felt like military leaders were deliberately being slow to advise him, Sanders said, “Not at all.” “As you know, he’s a person who like to take action and take it quickly,” she said. “He wants options on the table so that he can make quick decision.”

Summary: ट्रम्प ने 'तूफान से पहले शांति' टिप्पणी की व्याख्या करने से इनकार कर दिया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When President Donald Trump spoke to reporters on Air Force One on Wednesday, he went out of his way to praise Democratic congressional leaders he had met earlier at the White House. He failed to mention Mitch McConnell or Paul Ryan, the two leaders of his own Republican party who also took part. It could have been a snub or mere oversight - the White House did not say immediately - but in the context of recent events, it was a reminder of Trump’s lingering frustration with Republicans who control Congress, even as he takes his first steps with Democrats to break a congressional gridlock.  Trump, who has branded Democrats as obstructionists, on Wednesday embraced a proposal from Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and his counterpart in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, for a three-month extension of the U.S. debt ceiling, rejecting a Republican plan for a longer extension. By contrast, at a meeting on Tuesday with McConnell, the Senate majority leader, and Ryan, speaker of the House of Representatives, both fellow Republicans, there was little personal interaction in the presence of reporters.  A close Trump associate said that Trump, a 71-year-old brash former reality TV star who had never held public office before he entered the White House in January, had yet to comprehend the need to improve his relationship with McConnell, a 75-year-old dour legislative tactician with more than 30 years in the U.S. Senate. His legislative priorities hanging in the balance, Trump is under pressure to improve ties with McConnell and salvage what he can of an increasingly jeopardized agenda that includes a healthcare overhaul, immigration, infrastructure and tax reform. “You want to go blow up the majority leader, that’s your prerogative, but it doesn’t get your agenda done. If you want to get things done, you have to make nice to him,” the source said.     A senior White House official said on Wednesday that Trump and McConnell had a “great working relationship” and the president respected his grasp of Senate rules and procedures. But aides say Trump privately has expressed annoyance at the slow pace of legislative action on his priorities and blames his own party, especially McConnell, for the failure. A Republican close to the White House said what Trump “doesn’t understand is he needs Mitch McConnell more than anyone else in this town, because he runs the Senate and sets the agenda.” “McConnell is a master of the Senate and he could and should be Trump’s biggest asset,” the Republican said. Trump spent part of recent months feuding with McConnell. After a healthcare overhaul effort collapsed in the Senate in July, Trump and McConnell traded accusations. McConnell said in his home state of Kentucky that Trump had “excessive expectations” of how much could get through Congress in a short period of time and suggested Trump was inexperienced. Clearly annoyed, Trump questioned McConnell’s competence. “Senator Mitch McConnell said I had ‘excessive expectations,’ but I don’t think so. After 7 years of hearing Repeal & Replace, why not done?” Trump tweeted. A source familiar with Trump’s thinking said the president  had a lot of respect for McConnell. “He just doesn’t like to be criticized and he viewed McConnell’s comments as demeaning,” the source said. An associate of McConnell said McConnell considered the usual drama surrounding Trump to be “totally irrelevant” to doing business with him and that from a “practical standpoint” all McConnell wanted to do was get work done. “He’s pretty drama free,” said the associate. “I have yet to encounter a single situation where he allows his personal feeling or animosity or any kind of emotional response affect the way he does business.” McConnell, whose wife, Elaine Chao, is Trump’s transportation secretary, has said he has no hard feelings after Trump’s criticism of him. “We have a lot of work ahead of us, and we are committed to advancing our shared agenda together and anyone who suggests otherwise is clearly not part of the conversation,” McConnell had said.

Summary: ट्रम्प, उनकी पार्टीः एक अमेरिकी अजीब जोड़ा


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump spoke with Saudi King Salman on Wednesday and urged  all the parties in the Qatar dispute  to find a diplomatic resolution to end a crisis that has embroiled several Gulf countries, the White House said in a statement. Saudi Arabia, along with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, have cut political and trade ties with Qatar since June because they say Doha supports regional foe Iran and Islamists.

Summary: सऊदी अरब के राजा से फोन पर बात कर ट्रंप ने कतर विवाद खत्म करने का आग्रह कियाः व्हाइट हाउस


BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - An abnormal sound detected in the South Atlantic ocean around the time that an Argentine navy submarine sent its last signal last week was  consistent with an explosion,  a navy spokesman said on Thursday.  Spokesman Enrique Balbi described the blast in the morning of Nov. 15 as  abnormal, singular, short, violent  and  non-nuclear.  A huge sea and air hunt is being conducted for the ARA San Juan, which went missing with 44 crew on board.

Summary: लापता अर्जेंटीना उप-नौसेना के पास 'एक विस्फोट के अनुरूप' घटना का पता चला


MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Monday that U.S. allegations Moscow was behind the hacking of Democratic Party emails were part of a cover-up designed to hide the fact that the U.S. election campaign had been manipulated by domestic forces. U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Sunday Russian intelligence services had hacked into Democratic National Committee computers, and she questioned Republican rival Donald Trump’s overtures to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Such pronouncements by Mrs Clinton are of the pre-election rhetoric genre and do not contain anything tangible,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call. “In this case they (the Americans) are trying to camouflage some of their own (pre-election) shenanigans by demonising Russia. We consider that to be wrong.” Peskov said Clinton’s comments were absurd and emotional and lacking in facts, saying it was wrong to accuse Moscow of wrongdoing without first investigating the accusations. “Official Russian bodies ... do not carry out cyber terrorism,” he said, saying the Kremlin wanted to see U.S.-Russia relations normalised.  The Kremlin has repeatedly denied involvement in the hacking incident and said it does not favour any candidate in the Nov. 8 U.S. election. Despite its official stance, Kremlin-backed TV has tilted its coverage in favour of Trump whom Putin has called “very talented.”

Summary: क्रेमलिनः अमेरिका ने रूस को खलनायक के रूप में पेश करके चुनावी साज़िश को छुपाया


LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - Britain must commit to paying what it owes to the European Union before talks can begin about a future relationship with the bloc after Brexit, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Friday.  The British are discovering, as we are, day after day new problems. That s the reason why this process will take longer than initially thought,  Juncker said in a speech to students in his native Luxembourg.  We cannot find for the time being a real compromise as far as the remaining financial commitments of the UK are concerned. As we are not able to do this we will not be able to say in the European Council in October that now we can move to the second phase of negotiations,  Juncker said.  They have to pay, they have to pay, not in an impossible way. I m not in a revenge mood. I m not hating the British.  The EU has told Britain that a summit next week will conclude that insufficient progress has been made in talks for Brussels to open negotiations on a future trade deal. London has been hoping and pressing for this to happen at the summit.

Summary: 'उन्हें भुगतान करना होगा', यूरोपीय संघ के जंकर ने ब्रिटेन के बारे में कहा


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Senate panel has rescinded a subpoena that would have forced Paul Manafort, a former campaign manager of President Donald Trump, to appear at a hearing on Wednesday as part of its probe into Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential election. Manafort is going to “continue discussions” with Senate investigators, a source familiar with the issue told Reuters. Another source said the subpoena was rescinded because the Senate Judiciary Committee was still negotiating with Manafort on document production and a later appearance.

Summary: सीनेट पैनल ने ट्रम्प के पूर्व अभियान प्रमुख के लिए सम्मन रद्द कियाः सूत्र


BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives widened their lead over the Social Democrats following a television debate in which Merkel came across as more convincing and reliable than her SPD challenger Martin Schulz, a poll showed on Thursday. The weekly survey by Infratest dimap for ARD television showed support for Merkel s CDU/CSU bloc holding steady at 37 percent while the SPD dropped two percentage points to 21 percent - their lowest reading in the poll since early January. The pollster questioned 1,503 voters from Monday to Wednesday, meaning the survey was the first fully conducted after Sunday s television debate in which hardly any policy differences emerged between Merkel and Schulz. The anti-immigration, euro-hostile AfD came in unchanged at 11 percent, making it the third-strongest political force. The radical Left followed with 10 percent, up 1 point. The business-friendly FDP scored 9 percent, also up 1 point, while the environmental Greens were unchanged at 8 percent. The polls indicated two parties FDP and the AfD should enter the Bundestag as they look set to beat the 5-percent threshold. The fractured political landscape could make it hard to form a viable alliance other than the current grand coalition between Merkel s CDU/CSU and the SPD. Another scenario could be a tricky three-way  Jamaica  coalition between Merkel s conservatives, the FDP and the Greens, though such a broad alliance has never been tested on the federal level before.

Summary: जर्मन एस. पी. डी. ने टेलीविजन बहस के बाद समर्थन खो दियाः सर्वेक्षण


BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk said on Monday he was under the impression that Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, who announced his resignation while in Saudi Arabia over the weekend, would return to Beirut within days. Machnouk said Hariri s meeting with Saudi King Salman in Riyadh on Monday showed  rumors  were untrue, in an apparent reference to speculation in Lebanon that Hariri had been detained in Saudi Arabia or forced to quit.

Summary: लेबनान के आंतरिक मंत्री का कहना है कि उन्हें लगता है कि प्रधानमंत्री हरीरी कुछ दिनों में लौट सकते हैं


BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The United States will send more troops to Iraq and will put them closer to the front lines of battle there to advise Iraqi forces in the war against Islamic State militants.  U.S. defense officials said on Monday that Washington will deploy about 200 additional troops, mostly as advisers for Iraqi troops as they advance towards Mosul, the largest Iraqi city still under Islamic State control. “As we see the Iraqis willing to fight and gaining ground, let’s make sure that we are providing them more support,” U.S. President Barack Obama said in an interview with CBS News. “My expectation is that by the end of the year, we will have created the conditions whereby Mosul will eventually fall,” Obama said. The United States has also authorized the use of Apache attack helicopters to help the Iraqis as they can provide quicker air support and precision fire. The advisers will accompany Iraqi units of about 2,500 troops moving closer to the front lines of battle. Until now, the advisers were limited to larger divisions of about 10,000 troops located further back from the battlefield.  The change will allow them to offer quicker advice to Iraqi troops as they try to retake Mosul, likely facing stiff resistance from an entrenched enemy. But it could also leave the U.S. advisers more vulnerable to enemy mortars and artillery. “This will put Americans closer to the action,” U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said. “Their whole purpose is to be able to help those forces respond in a more agile way.” The decision to enlarge the U.S. military force was made in close concert with Iraqi authorities, said Carter, who met U.S. commanders and Iraqi officials including Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on a visit to Baghdad. Iraq is engulfed in a political crisis over anti-corruption reforms that is crippling state institutions and threatening to slow the campaign against the militants.     The increase raises the authorized troop level in Iraq to  4,087, not including special operations personnel, some logistics workers and troops on temporary rotations.  The Pentagon will also provide up to $415 million to Kurdish peshmerga military units, who have played an important role in pushing back Islamic State in northern Iraq. Part of that funding will likely be spent on basics like food, said Lieutenant General Sean MacFarland, head of the U.S.-led coalition battling Islamic State. “Right now the peshmerga are not getting enough calories to keep them in the field,” MacFarland said. The increase is the latest move by the United States, which invaded Iraq in 2003 to overthrow Saddam Hussein, to step up its campaign against the hardline Sunni jihadists. Since December, Iraqi forces trained by the U.S. military and backed by coalition air strikes have taken back territory from Islamic State, which seized swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014. Some U.S. troops already in Iraq will be shifted to establishing logistics for Iraqi forces as they move towards Mosul, Carter said. These include supply lines, particularly important as Mosul is 400 km (250 miles) north of Baghdad. Most of the new U.S. advisers, who will make up the bulk of the new troops, will be Army Special Forces, as are the about  100 advisers now in Iraq. The rest of the troops announced on Monday include support crew for the Apaches and security forces to protect the advisers. The United States will also deploy an additional long-range rocket artillery unit to support Iraqi ground forces in the battle for Mosul, Carter said. Two such batteries are already in place in Iraq. The officials did not rule out the possibility that lasting success might require further U.S. commitments. “If it doesn’t take us all the way, we’ll come back and have another discussion and ask for more if we need to,” McFarland said.

Summary: इस्लामिक स्टेट से निपटने के लिए इराक में और सैनिक भेजेगा अमेरिका


DUBAI (Reuters) - Two men wanted by Saudi authorities were injured when security officers tried to capture them, state news agency SPA reported on Friday.  Mohammed Al-abdelal and Moustafa Al Subaiti were arrested on Thursday in the eastern town of Tarout in the Qatif province, where many Shi ite Muslims live, SPA reported citing a statement by the interior ministry. The statement added the detained were taken to hospital to be treated from injuries they sustained as they resisted security forces. The ministry did not say why the men were wanted. A security campaign in recent months against Shi ite Muslim gunmen in the small eastern town of Awamiya has reduced dozens of buildings in the town of Awamiya to ruins and forced thousands of residents to flee. The oil-producing region is home to a large Shi ite population and has been a flashpoint between the Sunni Muslim government and Shi ites complaining of discrimination.

Summary: कातिफ में सऊदी सुरक्षा बलों द्वारा दो वांछित लोग घायल


DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi-led coalition aircraft struck a military police camp in the Houthi-controlled Yemeni capital Sanaa on Wednesday, killing at least 39 people and wounding 90 more, including some prisoners, an official and witnesses said. The strike is part of an air campaign by the Western-backed coalition on the Iran-allied Houthis that has escalated since the Houthis crushed an uprising last week led by former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh and killed him. One official in the camp said the coalition aircraft had launched seven raids on the camp, located in the eastern part of Sanaa, where some 180 prisoners were being held. The official said rescue teams had pulled out 35 bodies from the rubble, while the rest were not accounted for. It was the latest in a string of air raids the coalition has conducted on Sanaa and other parts of the country, sometimes causing multiple casualties among civilians. A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition could not immediately be reached for comment on the report. The coalition denies that it targets civilians. The United States and Britain provide political backing as well as weapons and logistical support for the Saudi-led coalition, which has been fighting since 2015 to restore Yemen s internationally-recognised president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, to power.

Summary: सना में पुलिस शिविर पर सऊदी के नेतृत्व में छापेमारी में कम से कम 39 यमनी मारे गएः अधिकारी


MADRID (Reuters) - The former head of Catalonia and other sacked members of the region s government are in Brussels, where they will make a declaration on Monday afternoon, newspaper La Vanguardia said. Other Barcelona-based paper El Periodico had earlier said Puigdemont was in the Belgian capital, without giving any further detail.

Summary: पुइग्डेमोंट, अन्य बर्खास्त कैटलन नेता ब्रसेल्स मेंः मीडिया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Friday vetoed legislation allowing families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia, which could prompt Congress to overturn his decision with a rare veto override, the first of his presidency. Obama said the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act would hurt U.S. national security and harm important alliances, while shifting crucial terrorism-related issues from policy officials into the hands of the courts. The bill passed the Senate and House of Representatives in reaction to long-running suspicions, denied by Saudi Arabia, that hijackers of the four U.S. jetliners that attacked the United States in 2001 were backed by the Saudi government. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals. Obama said other countries could use the law, known as JASTA, as an excuse to sue U.S. diplomats, members of the military or companies - even for actions of foreign organizations that had received U.S. aid, equipment or training. “Removing sovereign immunity in U.S. courts from foreign governments that are not designated as state sponsors of terrorism, based solely on allegations that such foreign governments’ actions abroad had a connection to terrorism-related injuries on U.S. soil, threatens to undermine these longstanding principles that protect the United States, our forces, and our personnel,” Obama said in a statement. Senator Chuck Schumer, who co-wrote the legislation and has championed it, immediately made clear how difficult it will be for Obama to sustain the veto. Schumer, the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate, issued a statement within moments of receiving the veto, promising that it would be “swiftly and soundly overturned.” He represents New York, home of most of the Sept. 11 victims. Both the Democratic and Republican candidates for president, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, said they would have signed the bill into law if they were in the White House. If two-thirds of the lawmakers in both the Senate and House vote to override, the law would stand, the first such override since he became president in 2009, and possibly the last.  Obama leaves office in January. Friday’s veto was the twelfth of his presidency. An override has been expected, despite some lawmakers saying they had doubts about the measure. In a letter seen by Reuters on Friday, Republican Representative Mac Thornberry, chairman of the powerful House Armed Services Committee, said he would oppose the override. “My primary concern is that this bill increases the risk posed to American military and intelligence personnel, diplomats and others serving our country around the world,” Thornberry wrote in a letter encouraging his fellow Republicans to sustain the veto. House Speaker Paul Ryan said Wednesday he thought there were enough votes to override a veto, but had concerns. “I worry about trial lawyers trying to get rich off of this. And I do worry about the precedent,” he told reporters. The “9/11 Families & Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism” group, which has pressed Congress to uphold the legislation, called Obama’s veto explanation “unconvincing and unsupportable.” The Saudi government has lobbied heavily to stop the bill,  the European Union has formally opposed it and Gulf States have condemned it. Major U.S. corporations such as General Electric and Dow Chemical have also pressed lawmakers to reconsider. “The bill is not balanced, sets a dangerous precedent, and has real potential to destabilize vital bilateral relationships and the global economy,” GE Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt said in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who supports the bill.

Summary: ओबामा ने 11 सितंबर के सऊदी विधेयक पर वीटो किया, कांग्रेस के साथ टकराव शुरू किया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s U.S. Supreme Court selection, failed to persuade Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley during a private meeting on Tuesday to hold confirmation hearings on his nomination. “As he indicated last week, Grassley explained why the Senate won’t be moving forward during this hyper-partisan election year,” Grassley’s office said in a statement that described the meeting as “cordial and pleasant.” The two men met for 70 minutes in the Senate dining room. The Iowa Republican two decades ago also sought to block Garland’s nomination to the federal appeals court on which he currently serves as chief judge. Garland later met privately with Lisa Murkowski, one of the dwindling number of moderate Senate Republicans. Her office issued a statement that also seemed to close the door on confirming Garland. Garland was nominated by Obama, a Democrat, on March 16 to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the Feb. 13 death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. Republicans who control the Senate are refusing to advance the nomination, prompting Democrats to accuse them of obstructionism and of ignoring their constitutional obligations. Republicans insist that the next president, to be elected on Nov. 8 and take office Jan. 20, fill the vacancy, hoping a Republican will win the White House and choose a conservative rather than the centrist Garland. Democrats applauded those Republicans willing to meet with Garland but said public hearings are essential. “Dark-money groups (conservative contributors) are trying to do the Republicans’ dirty work and sully Judge Garland’s name while Republican senators prevent Judge Garland from explaining his views to the public,” New York Senator Chuck Schumer told reporters. “That is cowardly, it’s backward and it is wrong.” The White House released a letter written by 15 former presidents of the American Bar Association to Senate leaders urging a timely hearing and a vote on Garland’s confirmation. “The stated refusal to fill the ninth seat of the Supreme Court injects a degree of politics into the judicial branch that materially hampers the effective operation of our nation’s highest court and the lower courts over which it presides,” the former ABA leaders stated. The conservative Tea Party Patriots and Judicial Crisis Network praised Grassley for holding firm against hearings. In a Reuters-Ipsos poll that included 900 registered Democrats and 788 registered Republicans conducted April 5-12, 55 percent said the Senate should hold confirmation hearings. The respondents were split along party lines, with 61 percent of Democrats supporting Garland’s confirmation compared to 22 percent of Republicans.

Summary: सीनेट न्यायपालिका समिति के अध्यक्ष ग्रासली ने गारलैंड से कहा कि कोई सुनवाई नहीं होगी


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump signed orders on Tuesday smoothing the path for the controversial Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines in a move to expand energy infrastructure and roll back key Obama administration environmental actions.  Oil producers in Canada and North Dakota are expected to benefit from a quicker route for crude oil to U.S. Gulf Coast refiners. But going ahead with the pipelines would mark a bitter defeat for Native American tribes and climate activists, who successfully blocked the projects earlier and vowed to fight the decisions through legal action. Trump campaigned on promises to increase domestic energy production. Before taking office he said the Dakota pipeline should be completed and that he would revive the C$8 billion ($6.1 billion) Keystone XL project, which was rejected in 2015 by then-President Barack Obama. U.S. crude imports have fallen dramatically in recent years as domestic production has boomed, but the world’s largest oil consumer still relies heavily on imports. Even though Canada is already the biggest source of U.S. crude imports, boosting the flow from a close ally is seen in Washington as a way to improve U.S. energy security. “It goes to show we as a nation build infrastructure that is part of a comprehensive energy plan to make our energy secure,” Republican Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota told Reuters.  TransCanada Corp said it would resubmit an application for a permit for Keystone XL after Trump signed an order saying the company could re-apply. The application will be reviewed by the U.S. State Department, which has 60 days to reach a decision.  The orders look set to undo victories won by protesters in North Dakota against Energy Transfer Partners, which has nearly completed construction of the Dakota line. Despite the advanced phase of the project, the Obama administration in December denied the company a permit to tunnel under the Missouri River. Protesters rallied for months against plans to route the $3.8 billion pipeline beneath a lake near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, saying it threatened water resources and sacred Native American sites. At one point, nearly 10,000 people had flocked to federal land in North Dakota, including 4,000 veterans after protests turned violent at times. The main protest camp has dwindled to several hundred after the Standing Rock tribe asked activists to leave when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied the easement. In a statement on Tuesday, the Standing Rock Sioux said they would fight the orders. “Americans know this pipeline was unfairly rerouted towards our nation and without our consent. The existing pipeline route risks infringing on our treaty rights, contaminating our water and the water of 17 million Americans downstream,” said Dave Archambault II, chairman of the Standing Rock tribe. The North Dakota Petroleum Council, the trade group for state oil producers relying on Dakota Access to expand their crude transport options, cheered Trump’s order. About 1 million barrels a day are currently produced in North Dakota. “We think this is a great step forward for energy security in America,” said Ron Ness, the council’s president.         The more than 800,000 bpd Keystone XL pipeline would bring heavy crude from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast. The project was conceived nearly a decade ago, but since then the U.S. shale revolution has redefined oil flows, with domestic refiners finding themselves awash with supply and needing fewer imports.  Canadian Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr said in Calgary that Keystone XL has all the regulatory approvals it needs in Canada, and that the project would be “very positive for Canada.”                    Environmental activists campaigned against the Keystone XL pipeline for more than seven years, eventually winning a victory when Obama rejected the project in 2015.  Trip Van Noppen, president of nonprofit environmental law organization Earthjustice, said in a statement that Trump “appears to be ignoring the law, public sentiment and ethical considerations” with the decision. TransCanada shares closed up 2.7 percent on the Toronto Stock Exchange.  Trump said on Tuesday in Washington that Keystone XL would create 28,000 jobs, but that figure is at odds with a 2014 U.S. State Department environmental study that said the project would create 3,900 construction jobs and 35 permanent jobs.  Shares of ETP, the company building the 450,000 barrel-a-day Dakota pipeline, ended the day up 3.5 percent in U.S. trading.  Trump owned ETP stock through at least mid-2016, according to financial disclosure forms, and ETP’s chief executive, Kelcy Warren, donated $100,000 to his campaign.  The protest against the 1,172-mile (1,885 km) Dakota pipeline was concentrated around blocking a permit to tunnel under Lake Oahe, a reservoir that forms part of the Missouri River, adjacent to the Standing Rock reservation. The Army Corps earlier this month said it would begin an environmental assessment that could delay the project further. Tuesday’s White House memoranda said the Army and the Army Corps of Engineers should review and quickly approve permits for Dakota Access.  In Cannon Ball, North Dakota, protesters, many of whom have stayed at the camp for months, said they would continue fighting to protect the environment. At a protest in front of the White House, a few hundred demonstrators shouted slogans and carried signs, including one that read: “Now environmental rapist.” “What happened today is an attack on our homes,” said Jade Begay, a spokeswoman for the Indigenous Environmental Network, which fights against mining and dumping on native lands. “We are going to continue to show up at your home, Donald Trump.” In New York City, about 300 protesters gathered outside the Trump International Hotel and Tower, chanting slogans such as “If all lives matter, then Native lives matter” and “You can’t drink oil, even in the soil.”  Actress and activist Jane Fonda, speaking to protesters with a bullhorn, called Trump “the predator in chief” and warned of the danger of oil spills. Graphic of proposed Dakota Access pipeline here - tmsnrt.rs/2kpvmic

Summary: ट्रम्प ने विवादास्पद तेल पाइपलाइनों के लिए रास्ता साफ किया


NEW YORK (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump trailed Democratic rival Hillary Clinton by 12 percentage points in a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday, making him the clear underdog ahead of next week’s Republican National Convention. Forty-five percent of likely voters supported former Secretary of State Clinton, 33 percent supported Trump, the wealthy businessman, and the remainder supported neither, according to the July 11-15 online poll. The survey showed little change from Tuesday, when Clinton had led Trump by 13 percentage points. Clinton has been ahead in the poll since early January. Trump only approached her level of support in May, after his last two remaining rivals quit the race and he became the presumptive Republican nominee. Trump’s favorability has dropped since then, as his campaign began to focus on the Nov. 8 general election. Trump has faced criticism in recent weeks over his now-defunct Trump University venture, which is accused of making false promises, and over his anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric. The poll results were mostly gathered before Thursday night’s deadly truck attack in Nice, France, and before Trump’s announcement on Friday that Indiana Governor Mike Pence would be his vice presidential running mate. The poll results suggest that Clinton’s use of personal email for government business while secretary of state and her handling of classified information have not damaged her support among likely voters.  But other polls show a closer race.  The CBS News/NY Times telephone poll has the candidates tied at 40 percent each, while a McClatchy/Marist telephone poll has Clinton leading by just 3 percentage points, 42 percent to Trump’s 39 percent.  Trump may get a bump in the polls following next week’s convention in Cleveland, where the party is expected to rally behind him as the nominee. In 2012, support for Republican nominee Mitt Romney rose about 5 percentage points following the convention that year.  The Democratic convention is set for the following week, opening July 25 in Philadelphia. The Reuters/Ipsos poll surveyed 1,186 likely voters across the continental United States, Alaska and Hawaii. It has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 3 percentage points.

Summary: क्लिंटन रिपब्लिकन कन्वेंशन से 12 अंकों आगेः रॉयटर्स/इप्सोस पोल


(This October 25 story has been refiled to clarify that IATA CEO remarks referred to March rules) By David Shepardson and Jamie Freed WASHINGTON/TAIPEI (Reuters) - New security measures including stricter passenger screening take effect on Thursday on all U.S.-bound flights to comply with government requirements aimed at responding to threats of hidden explosives, airlines said. Airlines contacted by Reuters said the new measures could include short security interviews with passengers at check-in or the boarding gate, sparking concerns over flight delays and extended processing time. They will affect 325,000 airline passengers on about 2,100 commercial flights arriving daily in the United States, on 180 airlines from 280 airports in 105 countries. U.S. Transportation Security Administration officials are giving some airlines or airports additional time to comply with the new interviews as long the U.S. government has approved security plans by Thursday.  TSA will continue to work closely with our aviation partners and verify that all security enhancements are accurately implemented,  TSA spokeswoman Lucy Martinez said in a statement Wednesday. The United States announced the new rules in June to end its restrictions on carry-on electronic devices on planes coming from 10 airports in eight countries in the Middle East and North Africa in response to concerns that explosives could be hidden in electronic devices. Those restrictions were lifted in July, but the Trump administration said it could reimpose measures on a case by case basis if airlines and airports did not boost security.   European and U.S. officials said at the time that airlines had 120 days to comply with the measures, including increased passenger screening. The 120-day deadline is Thursday. Airlines had until late July to expand explosive trace detection testing.  We see this as a big issue for China Airlines,  Steve Chang, senior vice president of the Taiwanese firm told reporters on Wednesday, adding the airline was trying to consult with the American Institute in the country over the issue.  Korean Airlines, South Korea s flagship carrier, also said it had a lot of concerns with the new measures.   We are asking customers to show up at the airport early ... It s just inconvenient for the passengers,  President and Chief Operating Officer Walter Cho told Reuters in Taipei. Lufthansa Group said on Tuesday the measures would be in place by Thursday and travelers could face short interviews at check-in or at the gate.  Economy passengers on Lufthansa s Swiss airline have been asked to check in at least 90 minutes before departure.  Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd said it would suspend in-town check-in and self bag-drop services for passengers booked on direct flights to the United States. The airline said passengers would also have short security interviews and it has advised travelers to arrive three hours before departure. Singapore Airlines Ltd said the security checks could include inspections of personal electronic devices as well as security questioning during check-in and boarding. Airlines for America, a U.S. trade group, said the changes   are complex security measures  but praised U.S. officials for giving airlines flexibility in meeting the new rules. Alexandre de Juniac, CEO of the International Air Transport Association, said the industry understood security threats to aviation were made regularly but in this case the U.S. government had not shared any specific dangers before announcing the initial Middle East and North Africa electronic device restrictions in March.  What we have seen is very strange,  he told reporters in Taipei.  Unilateral measures announced without any prior consultation... That is something that is very concerning and disturbing.   Airlines were however consulted after the March changes. At their annual meeting in Taipei, Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) members passed a resolution calling for security measures to be risk-based, outcome-focused and proportionate to the probable threat.   Unilateral actions taken by individual governments reacting to emerging threats may result in unnecessary disruption or lead to unintended safety consequences,  said the members. AAPA includes most large Asian airlines but not mainland Chinese carriers.  The risk is other countries make similar demands,  AAPA Director General Andrew Herdman said. U.S. authorities in June also ordered increased security around aircraft and in passenger areas, and other places where travelers can be cleared by U.S. officials before they depart and ordered enhanced screening of personal electronic devices. Some of those new requirements take effect this week as well. The TSA said in July it was imposing new security rules requiring U.S. domestic airline travelers to remove all electronic items larger than mobile phones such as tablets, e-readers and video game consoles from carry-on baggage for screening.

Summary: गुरुवार से नए अमेरिकी सुरक्षा नियमों के लिए एयरलाइंस तैयार


VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria s shift to the right in a parliamentary election has paved the way for young conservative star Sebastian Kurz to become the next leader and opened a path for the resurgent far right to return to power. The People s Party, which named 31-year-old Foreign Minister Kurz its leader only in May, secured a clear victory on Sunday with a hard line on immigration that left little space between it and the anti-Islam Freedom Party (FPO). But Kurz was still well short of a majority and only two other parties won enough seats to give him control of  parliament in a coalition. An alliance with the FPO is far from certain, but it is the most likely outcome. That prospect prompted guarded expressions of concern from European leaders including Germany s Angela Merkel, who said the FPO s strong showing was a  big challenge  for other parties in Austria. Kurz has been careful to avoid saying which coalition partner he might favor. He has said any partner must be pro-European, without saying whether that rules out the FPO, which is critical of the bloc but no longer argues against membership.  The (election) result is above all a clear victory for the European Union, it is a clear victory for us as a pro-European force,  Kurz told Reuters. His party s manifesto calls for a smaller European Commission and a streamlined EU that focuses on  core competences  such as internal trade and securing the bloc s external borders. But he declined to be drawn on specific plans. Austria was a gateway into Germany for more than a million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and elsewhere during Europe s migration crisis which began in 2015.  It also took in more than one percent of its population in asylum seekers that year. Many voters feel the country was overrun then. Austria s shift to the right came after German voters last month punished Merkel s open-door policy for migrants, pushing her conservative bloc to its worst showing since 1949 and putting the far-right AfD party in parliament.  The FPO was founded by former Nazis in the 1950s and went from minnow to political heavyweight in the 1990s under the charismatic Joerg Haider, who praised Hitler s employment policies. It was one of the first far-right parties to enjoy mainstream success in Europe since World War Two.  When the FPO went into government in 2000 with the conservative party Kurz now leads, the rest of the European Union reacted with outrage and imposed sanctions on Austria . The FPO is now a sister to France s National Front and the AfD. Though on course to be one of the world s youngest leaders, Kurz is a relative veteran in government. He entered cabinet as a secretary of state for integration six years ago and has been foreign minister for the past three. He made immigration his core issue, arguing against his own coalition government s decision to throw open Austria s borders in lock step with Merkel s Germany during the migration crisis. That helped cement his reputation as a polished straight talker and make him the country s most popular politician. Kurz called an end to a coalition with the Social Democrats, prompting Sunday s election, and the two sides are at loggerheads, making a tie-up with the FPO more likely.  The race between the FPO and Chancellor Christian Kern s Social Democrats was too close to call after Sunday s count, leaving it to postal ballots   roughly a sixth of all votes cast   to tell them apart. The bulk of those ballots were expected to be counted on Monday. The FPO was ahead on Sunday but pollsters  projections showed postal ballots swinging the vote against it, as they did in last year s close-fought presidential election. With most postal votes counted, the Social Democrats had taken the lead and were ahead by 2,540 votes, with both parties on 26.6 percent, Interior Ministry data showed on Monday night.   We are not yet in the phase of coalition talks,  said Kurz, adding that he would await Thursday s final result. If the FPO had came second, it would have improved its odds of going into government with Kurz, since the Social Democrats would only consider a  coalition of losers  with the FPO if the far-right party were the junior partner. In June the Social Democrats lifted a self-imposed ban on coalitions with the FPO that had been in place for 30 years, implicitly recognizing the difficulty of forming governments without a party on course to secure more than 26 percent of Sunday s votes. After decades in parliament, the Freedom Party has sought to become increasingly mainstream, purging its ranks of overt anti-Semitism and even openly courting Jewish voters, with limited success. World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder, who was the U.S. ambassador to Austria from 1986 to 1987, called for the FPO to be kept out of government.  It is sad and distressing that such a platform should receive more than a quarter of the vote,  Lauder said in a statement.

Summary: ऑस्ट्रिया के रूढ़िवादी बदलाव ने सुदूर दक्षिणपंथियों के लिए सत्ता का रास्ता खोल दिया है


PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday told dozens of world leaders and company bosses gathered at a climate summit in Paris that  we are losing the battle  against climate change.  We re not moving quick enough. We all need to act,  Macron said, seeking to breath new life into efforts to combat global warming after President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of an international accord brokered in the French capital two years ago.

Summary: फ्रांस के मैक्रों का कहना है कि दुनिया जलवायु परिवर्तन के खिलाफ लड़ाई हार रही है


PARIS (Reuters) - The French island of Martinique escaped Hurricane Maria largely unscathed but a communications blackout with Guadeloupe meant it would be several more hours before damage there could be assessed, a senior French Civil Protection official said on Tuesday. Maria, the second major storm to hit the Caribbean this month, lashed Guadeloupe s southern shores as it tracked northwest toward the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.  In Martinique, reconnaissance operations are still underway but already we can see that there is no significant damage,  Jacques Witkowski, France s head of civil protection and crisis response, told a news briefing in Paris. He said the hurricane was currently less than 70 km (43.5 miles) south of Guadeloupe.  Right now we re in a blackout zone, so it s very, very hard to communicate with Guadeloupe,  Witkowski said.    Video footage released by the Guadeloupe prefecture showed tree-bending winds whipping through deserted streets and shaking lamp posts when the storm first hit. It urged residents to stay indoors and take shelter in their most secure room. Guadeloupe prefect Eric Maire said up to 400 millimeters of rain were forecast in some parts of the island. A storm surge could also flood low-lying coastal areas.  We ve already got some early information of flooding, flooded houses and submerged roads,  Maire said in a video recording posted on the prefecture s Twitter handle. Airport group Guadeloupe Pole Caraibes said Guadeloupe s main international airport would be closed until at least 14:00 local time (1800 GMT) on Tuesday.

Summary: मार्टीनिक तूफान मारिया के प्रकोप से बच गया, ग्वाडेलोप ने लात मारी


BEIJING (Reuters) - Any attempt to separate Taiwan from China will be thwarted and the principle of peaceful reunification must be upheld, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Wednesday at the start of a Communist Party Congress. China regards self-ruled and democratic Taiwan as a wayward territory, to be brought under Beijing s rule by force if necessary.

Summary: चीन के शीः ताइवान को चीन से अलग करने के किसी भी प्रयास को विफल कर दिया जाएगा


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi was re-elected to her post on Wednesday, beating back a challenger  who accused Democrats of ignoring the working-class Americans who flocked to Republican Donald Trump in elections this month. Pelosi, 76, a Californian who has been in Congress for 30 years and led the party in the House for 14 of them, defeated 43-year-old Tim Ryan, a seven-term representative from the Rust Belt region of northeastern Ohio. The vote, taken by secret ballot, was 134-63. Ryan had brought his challenge complaining about the Democrats’ track record under Pelosi’s guidance, noting Democrats have only been in the majority in the House of Representatives for four of the past 18 years.  He said Wednesday that he had been “biting his tongue” until the Nov. 8 national election, when Trump won the White House with the support of many working-class Americans, and Republicans kept control of the House and Senate. Democrats gained only about a half-dozen seats in the House of Representatives, when some had thought they would make double-digit gains.  Ryan said after the vote he was satisfied his concerns had at least been heard by Democratic leaders, and there might be change. “If the message of the Democrats now is about working class people ... if that’s our focus, we will right this ship,” he said. Pelosi also suggested there had been a lesson learned. “Never again will we have an election where there’s any doubt in anyone’s minds where the Democrats are when it comes to America’s working families,” she told reporters. It was the biggest challenge to Pelosi’s leadership since 2010, when then-Representative Heath Shuler got just 43 votes.  Ryan’s backers stressed they fear the party will be doomed to its minority status if it continues to move away from working-class people, traditionally part of the Democrats’ base.  “We talk more about free-range chickens than we do working people on the Democratic side sometimes,” Representative Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts said before the vote. “We have to convince the American people, the American worker, that we’re in their corner. And Donald Trump did that. He took that away from us,” Lynch said. But Representative Eliot Engel, a Pelosi supporter, said “you really can’t blame her” for the party’s disappointing showing in November. “It was a loss of support at the top and it trickled all the way down,” Engel said.

Summary: पेलोसी हाउस डेमोक्रेटिक नेतृत्व पद के लिए फिर से चुनी गईं


MISRATA/BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - A man seized by U.S. forces in Libya accused of involvement in an attack that killed the U.S. Ambassador in Benghazi in 2012 is a Syrian who had links to the suspected ringleader, Libyan military officials said on Tuesday. U.S. special forces captured Mustafa al-Imam in the past few days and he is being transported to the United States, U.S. officials said on Monday, without giving more details. Speaking on condition of anonymity, eastern-based military officials told Reuters Imam was believed to be a Syrian national aged between 35 and 40. He was captured near Misrata, the country s third-largest city located some 190 km east of the capital Tripoli, said Mohammed al-Ghasri, spokesman of the defense ministry of the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli.  He was caught near the city of Misrata after his movements had been monitored,  Ghasri told Reuters in the first official statement of the Tripoli-based government. When asked whether Libyan authorities had been present during the U.S. operation he only said:  Yes...(there) was coordination with the security agencies inside Misrata city.  He declined to elaborate. The man had been originally from eastern Libya but spent time in Misrata where he had roots while he also had been moving around, Ghasri added.  He did not live in Misrata.  Imam had previously lived in the Benghazi district of Laithi where he frequented the same Al-Awza i mosque as suspected ringleader Ahmed Abu Khatallah who was snatched by U.S. forces in 2014, eastern military officials said. U.S. prosecutors opened their case against Abu Khatallah this month.  Imam has been charged with  killing a person in the course of an attack on a federal facility  and providing  material support to terrorists resulting in death,  the U.S. Justice Department said. He will appear before a federal judge in Washington when he arrives in the United States. Laithi was an Islamist stronghold that saw some of the heaviest fighting in a battle for control of Benghazi that began in 2014. In July, eastern-based military commander Khalifa Haftar announced victory in the campaign, which pitted his Libyan National Army (LNA) against Islamists and other opponents. Libya has rival governments: one in the capital and another in the east allied to Haftar. An eastern news agency backing the LNA published what it said was a picture of Imam standing in front of the Benghazi barracks of an armed group before it was taken by Haftar s forces. The Benghazi attack, which killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, was the topic of numerous congressional hearings, with Republican lawmakers critical of the way in which then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton handled the attack.  Libya has been mired in conflict since the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, with Islamist militants gaining ground as fighting between rival factions created a security void.

Summary: बेनगाज़ी हमले में पकड़ा गया व्यक्ति सीरियाई है जो संदिग्ध सरगना से जुड़ा हुआ हैः लीबिया के अधिकारी


HELSINKI (Reuters) - Lithuania expects NATO to reach an agreement next year to shield Baltic countries with air defenses, plugging a gap in its security against Russia, its defense minister said on Tuesday. Since Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and began providing weapons and troops to separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine, NATO has send more forces to the Baltics, eastern Poland and around the Black Sea. Lithuania, which borders the Russian region of Kaliningrad, wants NATO to permanently deploy anti-aircraft weapons in the Baltics or Poland   a move seen by Moscow as an unjustified military build-up on its borders.  We expect so,  defense minister Raimundas Karoblis told Reuters when asked if he saw an agreement shaping up for the NATO summit in 2018.   Air defense is one of the issues which we need to address. We also need to look at other domains, like NATO command structure reform, we need to move forward on all on these aspects,  he said, also calling for NATO to strengthen maritime defenses in the Baltics. Karoblis spoke in Helsinki after meeting his counterparts from Northern Group countries, including the Nordic and Baltic states, Britain, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands. U.S. Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis also joined the meeting. Karoblis said exercises should be considered by NATO after Russia s Zapad war games unnerved the West in September. Mattis told reporters after the meeting that the 12 nations stood together to reaffirm territorial integrity.  It is clear that one nation thinks it holds some kind of a veto or strong influence, over others, that is Russia. The country s name came up repeatedly, over the last 48 hours,  he said.

Summary: लिथुआनिया को उम्मीद है कि नाटो बाल्टिक एयर शील्ड पर समझौता कर लेगा


BOGOTA (Reuters) - A bomb attack by Colombia s leftist ELN rebel group has halted pumping operations along the country s second-largest oil pipeline, the Cano-Limon Covenas, sources from the military and state oil company Ecopetrol said on Monday. The attack took place in rural El Carmen municipality in Norte de Santander province, near the border with Venezuela, the sources said. The bombing caused a crude spillage into a nearby river. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because an official announcement has not yet been made. Production at the Cano Limon oilfield, operated by U.S.-based Occidental Petroleum Corp, and exports have not been affected, the sources said. Ecopetrol officials said a team from the company was in the area to carry out clean-up operations. Repairs are expected to take several days, they said. Attacks against the pipeline have left 751 victims over the last 17 years, including 167 deaths. Since 1986 the pipeline has been out of service 3,800 days, or 10.4 years, 30 percent of its life. Some 66 million gallons of crude have been spilled since 2000, according to Ecopetrol figures. The 485-mile (780-km) pipeline can carry up to 210,000 barrels per day. The National Liberation Army (ELN), considered a terrorist group by the United States and European Union, has frequently attacked Colombia s oil infrastructure during the group s five-decade war with the government. Despite peace talks begun with the government in February, the ELN has continued pipeline attacks. It opposes the presence of multinational companies in the mining and oil sector, claiming that they seize natural resources without leaving benefits to the country s population or economy.

Summary: विद्रोहियों के हमले के बाद कोलंबिया ने रोकी कैनो-लिमोन पाइपलाइनः सूत्र


AMSTERDAM/PARIS (Reuters) - Hurricane Irma has killed at least five people and left a trail of destruction on the part-French, part-Dutch Caribbean island of Saint Martin, government officials in France and the Netherlands said on Thursday. Packing winds of around 175 mph (290 kph), the storm lashed several small islands in the northeast Caribbean, including St  Martin and St Barthelemy, tearing down trees, flattening homes and causing widespread damage. French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe on Thursday said four bodies had been recovered on the French side of the island, revising down an earlier death toll.  The death toll is still uncertain because clearing operations are under way,  Philippe told a news conference at a crisis centre in Paris. About 50 people have been injured.  There is considerable damage,  Philippe said, adding that local authorities in Saint Martin said 95 percent of the houses there had been damaged, and 60 percent were uninhabitable.  There is no electricity, no drinkable water, gasoline is unavailable.  Philippe said the government would on Friday declare a state of emergency, facilitating insurance compensation. Government officials in the Netherlands said the hurricane had caused enormous devastation on the Dutch side of the island, killing one person and injuring several others. The Dutch navy, which has two ships stationed off the coast, tweeted images gathered by helicopter showing damaged houses, hotels and boats. Sint Maarten, as it is known in Dutch, is an independent nation within the Kingdom of the Netherlands with a population of around 40,000 people, about the same as on the French side of the island. Images of the Dutch side s Juliana Airport showed the landing strips appeared intact, although the navy said the airport was unreachable for now.

Summary: तूफान इरमा ने सेंट मार्टिन द्वीप पर मचाई तबाही, पांच लोगों की मौत


BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Shi ite militias illegally detained villagers near the Islamic State-held district of Hawija in northern Iraq and subjected them to torture and ill treatment, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday. The leader of one of the militias, which are known as Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), denied the accusation and said their fighters were strictly following the law in their dealings with civilians fleeing military operations in the area.  Iraq launched an offensive on September 21 to dislodge Islamic State from Hawija, which lies west of the oil city of Kirkuk and is one of two areas of the country still under the control of the militants. Men from villages near Hawija were detained by militias from the Badr Organisation, a pro-Iran, Shi ite grouping that is playing a major role in Baghdad s war against Islamic State, and were taken to an unknown location, the HRW report said, based on interviews with villagers evacuated to a nearby refugee camp. The villagers told HRW they had seen militia fighters using their gun butts to beat the detained men. During their detention the fighters brought them food only once and only a small amount of water but did not let them use a bathroom.  Human Rights Watch has documented that PMF groups, including units affiliated with the Badr Organization, have screened, detained, and tortured people during the military operations,  said the report.Women were also detained briefly by Iraqi security forces and were questioned about their male relatives  activities before being transported to the refugee camp, HRW said.  While Iraqi forces do need all the help they can get, the government should not allow abusive forces to use this opportunity for even more abuse,  said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. The Iraqi government was not immediately available to comment on the HRW report, but local Badr commander Kareem al-Mohammedawi denied that villagers  rights had been abused.  We are strictly ordering our fighters to abide by the law and avoid mistreating refugees fleeing the fighting. But when we suspect someone is a terrorist we normally arrest him and hand him over to the security forces,  he said.           Hawija and a stretch of land along the Syrian border are the last pieces of Iraq still in the hands of Islamic State, which overran about a third of the country in 2014.

Summary: इराकी शिया मिलिशिया पर हवीजा अभियान में अधिकारों के हनन का आरोप