WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat on Thursday accused panel chairman Devin Nunes of violating his recusal from its Russia probe by issuing three subpoenas to U.S. security and other officials. “Commitments to recuse himself have not been fully honored,” Adam Schiff said in an interview with MSNBC. Schiff added that he and Republican Representative Michael Conaway, the top Republican now leading the panel’s probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, would not be distracted from their investigation.

Summary: शीर्ष सदन इंटेल पैनल डेमोक्रेट ने सम्मन पर अध्यक्ष को फटकार लगाईः एम. एस. एन. बी. सी.


DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran rejected on Sunday a call by French President Emmanuel Macron for talks on Tehran s ballistic missiles, saying they were defensive and unrelated to a nuclear agreement with world powers. On Thursday, Macron said during a visit to Dubai that he was  very concerned  by Iran s ballistic missile program, mentioning a missile fired from Yemen and intercepted by Saudi Arabia earlier this month. He raised the prospect of possible sanctions with regard to those activities.   There are negotiations we need to start on Iran s ballistic missiles,  Macron said.  But Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi rejected that possibility.  France is fully aware of our country s firm position that Iran s defense affairs are not negotiable,  he said.  We have told French officials repeatedly that the nuclear deal is not negotiable and other issues will not be allowed to be added to it,  Qassemi said, according to a statement on the ministry s website. The United States accused Iran on Tuesday of supplying Yemen s Houthi rebels with a missile that was fired into Saudi Arabia in July and called for the United Nations to hold Tehran accountable for violating two U.N. Security Council resolutions.  Saudi Arabia and its allies accuse Iran of supplying missiles and other weapons to the Houthis, saying the arms were not present in Yemen before conflict broke out there in 2015. Iran denies the charges and blames the conflict on Riyadh. The United States has imposed unilateral sanctions on Iran, saying its missile tests violate a U.N. resolution that calls on Tehran not to undertake activities related to missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.  Iran says its missile program is defensive and it has no plans to build nuclear-capable missiles.

Summary: ईरान ने ईरानी मिसाइलों पर बातचीत के लिए मैक्रों के आह्वान को अस्वीकार कर दिया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump must divest his luxury Washington hotel in a building leased from the federal government because the arrangement violates conflict-of-interest rules, congressional Democrats said on Wednesday. The General Services Administration, which manages property owned by the federal government, including the Old Post Office  housing the Trump International Hotel, has said the lease would violate federal conflict-of-interest rules once the Republican businessman is sworn in on Jan. 20, according to a letter to the agency from lawmakers. The letter referred to a Dec. 8 briefing to congressional staffers by a GSA official whom the letter did not name. “The Deputy Commissioner made clear that Mr. Trump must divest himself not only of managerial control, but of all ownership interest as well,” Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland and three other Democrats said in the letter, which was made public on Wednesday. The hotel is a few blocks from the White House and has become a rallying point for anti-Trump protesters since it opened in September. It is among businesses that could create unprecedented conflicts of interest for Trump, a New York real estate developer and former reality TV star. Trump’s company has not responded to the GSA’s concerns about the potential conflict, the Democratic lawmakers said. They asked the agency for documents about the lease, profit and expense projections and legal memos about the conflict of interest. The hotel lease includes a standard GSA provision barring members of Congress or other elected federal officials - such as the president - from having any part of it.  Trump has said he will draw up documents that will remove him from day-to-day business operations. He had planned a Thursday news conference to disclose details, but put that announcement off until next month. Trump will address the hotel issue in January, spokesman Jason Miller told reporters. In response to the Democrats’ letter, the GSA said in a statement it could not speak definitively about divestment until Trump’s financial arrangements were completed and he had become president. The agency added, “To do so now would be premature.” Later on Wednesday, Cummings said Democrats still stood “100 percent behind” the letter, saying GSA informed their staff of the lease issue. Federal law does not prohibit the president’s involvement in private business while in office, even though lawmakers and executive branch officials are subject to conflict-of-interest rules.  But most presidents in recent decades have placed their personal assets in blind trusts so they do not know how their decisions influence their personal fortunes. Trump has said he plans to avoid the conflict issue by transferring control of his businesses to his oldest three children.  But the U.S. Office of Government Ethics said in a letter to Democratic Senator Tom Carper of Delaware on Monday that such a transfer would not qualify legally as a blind trust nor eliminate conflicts of interest.

Summary: ट्रम्प का वाशिंगटन होटल हितों का टकराव हैः डेमोक्रेट सांसद


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Representative Jeb Hensarling, the Republican chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, announced on Tuesday that he would retire from Congress at the end of 2018, marking the exit of Congress’s leading advocate for rolling back strict financial rules. Hensarling, 60, of Texas, said in a statement that he would not seek re-election, noting that his term as head of the banking panel expires at the same time. He has been a vocal proponent of significant deregulation in the financial sector and an author of sweeping legislation to drastically reduce the regulations imposed on banks. “Today I am announcing that I will not seek re-election to the U.S. Congress in 2018,” Hensarling said in a statement. “Although service in Congress remains the greatest privilege of my life, I never intended to make it a lifetime commitment, and I have already stayed far longer than I had originally planned.” Hensarling, first elected to Congress in 2002, had been the architect of a broad rewrite of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law. The overall would have eliminated several of the major powers given to regulators after the 2007-2009 financial crisis and impose strict new limitations on their authority. That bill, the Financial CHOICE Act, is not expected to become law after passing the House, due to insufficient support in the Senate. But his work was hailed by GOP colleagues as an ambitious effort to cut regulation of the banking industry. “Jeb has eloquently articulated this conservative vision, leading the charge to repeal Dodd-Frank and deliver a freer market that gives every American the opportunity to achieve the American dream,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy in a statement. Banking lobby groups, including the Financial Services Roundtable and American Bankers Association, said Hensarling had been a strong leader who advanced reforms that led to economic opportunity and better banking. He has been a steadfast critic of rules imposed on the financial sector after the crash, and became an industry ally in efforts to roll them back. But those efforts also made him a top target of advocates of stricter rules, who said his efforts would put Americans at risk of a similar meltdown. “Hensarling has probably just decided to spend more time with his banks. We hope the revolving door doesn’t hit him too hard on the way out,” said Karl Frisch, executive director of Allied Progress. While some GOP lawmakers have announced plans to retire after facing uphill re-election battles, Hensarling hails from a deeply conservative district in Texas where he remains highly popular. In 2016, he faced no Republican rivals in the party’s primary and took 80.6 percent of the district’s vote in the general election. Even though the district consistently votes Republican, his resignation will provide another opportunity for Democrats to realize their hopes of taking control of the House in 2018. Lawyer Dan Wood, has already entered the race to be the party’s nominee for the seat. Unlike some exiting Republicans, Hensarling never publicly feuded with President Donald Trump. In fact, Trump had considered Hensarling for a post in his administration after the election. His exit will set off a competition to take over as head of the powerful banking committee. Representative Patrick McHenry is the vice chair of the committee, but Representatives Blaine Luetkemeyer, Bill Huizenga, and Sean Duffy are also potential contenders, according to lobbyists familiar with the committee. One lobbyist said Luetkemeyer was the leading candidate to lead the panel, as McHenry is seen as a rising star in House leadership. Luetkemeyer is “seriously considering” running for the chairmanship, according to his spokeswoman. Hensarling’s next move is unclear. Some lobbyists speculated he could take a top role at a conservative think tank like the Heritage Foundation. Alternatively, he could take a role in the administration or return to his home state. Cowen and Co analyst Jaret Seiberg said in a client note that Hensarling could be “the top contender” to take over the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The current FHFA Director, Mel Watt, is an appointee of former President Barack Obama, serving out a term that expires in January of 2019.

Summary: कांग्रेस छोड़ने वाले वॉल स्ट्रीट नियमों के मुखर, शक्तिशाली आलोचक


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Wednesday he discussed the dramatic impact that some budget proposals being considered in Washington would have on New Yorkers, including a repeal of Obamacare and a proposal to end deductions for state and local taxes. “A proposal that’s being discussed that would end the deductibility of state and local taxes, for example, which would be devastating for New York, California etc,” Cuomo said after meeting the Republican president-elect. Ending the Affordable Care Act, he said, would leave 3 million New Yorkers without health insurance.

Summary: कुओमो का कहना है कि उन्होंने ट्रम्प के साथ ओबामाकेयर, कर कटौती पर चर्चा की


VLADIKAVKAZ/IVNYA, Russia (Reuters) - At polling station no. 333 in the Russian city of Vladikavkaz, Reuters reporters only counted 256 voters casting their ballots in a regional election on Sunday. People were voting across Russia in what is seen as a dress rehearsal for next year s presidential vote. Kremlin candidates for regional parliaments and governorships performed strongly nationwide. When the official results for polling station no. 333 were declared, the turnout was first given as 1,331 before being revised up to 1,867 on Tuesday. That is more than seven times higher than the number of voters counted by Reuters - with 73 percent of the votes going to United Russia, the party of President Vladimir Putin. Election officials at the polling station said their tally was correct and there were no discrepancies.   Reuters reporters were there when the polls opened at 08:00 until after the official count had been completed. They saw one man, who said he was a United Russia election observer, approaching the ballot box multiple times and each time putting inside voting papers.  We must ensure 85 percent for United Russia. Otherwise, the Tsar will stop providing us with money,  the man, Sergei Lyutikov, told a reporter, in an apparent reference to Putin. Putin is the strong favorite to win re-election next year. Many voters credit him with restoring national pride. However, with the economy forecast to grow only 1 percent this year enthusiasm for Putin is not as strong as it has been. Political analysts say that could result in a weak election turnout. Reuters reporters observed the vote at six polling stations on Sunday. At all six the reporters found discrepancies, of varying sizes, between the official vote tally and the number of voters the reporters counted. The reporters were present for the entire voting day except for in one place where a reporter missed the start because they were initially not allowed in. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, responding to a Reuters request for comment, said:  On the whole, no one has any doubts about the legitimacy of the elections, not the observers, not journalists. There were some incidents, probably. After all, it s a big country.   But neither we nor journalists have the right to describe something as a violation until the central election commission describes it as such,  he said.  There were observers there. So in this case there probably should be complaints from them. So one needs to see if there were complaints from them.   Russia s central election commission, asked about the discrepancies witnessed by Reuters, did not immediately respond. Ella Pamfilova, chair of the commission, told a news conference after polls closed that the irregularities that had been reported to her commission would be investigated. United Russia s party headquarters, in a statement sent to Reuters, said it gave no orders to anyone to stuff ballots or falsify results. It said all violations would be examined by election commissions and, if the law was broken, those responsible would be punished.  The six polling stations the Reuters reporters visited were in three regions but there were thousands of polling stations operating in Russia on Sunday so the events only offer a small snapshot of what happened.   Reuters reporters are unable to assess if such practices were widespread, or whether they had a material bearing on the outcome of the election.      Opinion polls consistently show that United Russia has more support than any other Russian party. Golos, a non-governmental organization whose volunteers monitored the voting in 36 regions, said late on Monday it had received reports of 825 violations of election rules. They included multiple reports of inflated turnout figures and ballot-stuffing. However, the NGO said violations were down compared to previous elections. At polling station no. 333, located in a further education college in Vladikavkaz, capital of the North Ossetia region, voters on Sunday were electing a new regional parliament. Lyutikov was there throughout the day. He works as an aide to Vadim Suanov, a United Russia deputy in the outgoing North Ossetia regional legislature, according to the legislature s website. Suanov, who was running for re-election on Sunday, told Reuters he knew nothing about what his employee did in the polling station. Lyutikov cast his ballot in the first hours of voting but later inserted ballot papers about 10 times, according to the Reuters witnesses. Lyutikov told a Reuters reporter not to document him at the ballot box, threatening to break her mobile phone if the pictures and video footage were not deleted. At one point, he showed a reporter his passport, with his name, Sergei Ivanovich Lyutikov and his date of birth, April 17 1984. While he was approaching the ballot box, he was in sight of Yelena Khadonova, the chair of the election commission for polling station no.333. Asked about Lyutikov s actions, she said:  I have nothing to comment on. I haven t seen anything.   At a parliamentary election last September, Reuters reporters at several polling stations found cases of inflated turnout and ballot-stuffing. Russia election chiefs said they would investigate, and the police launched their own investigation. After Sunday s vote, Kremlin candidates were on track to win in all 16 regions where governors were being elected, according to preliminary results. In the six regions where parliaments were being elected, including in North Ossetia, United Russia was in comfortable first place.  United Russia was less dominant in municipal elections in parts of Moscow, where support for opposition candidates is traditionally stronger. At another location, polling station no. 618 in Belgorod region, a Reuters reporter accompanied election officials on their visits to voters  houses to administer home voting. The number of home voters was equal to about a quarter of those who voted at the polling station.     Under Russia s electoral rules, voting at home is reserved for cases where a voter has specifically requested a visit, because for health reasons they are unable to make it to a polling station. Kremlin opponents and independent monitors say home voting is open to abuse because it is not subject to the same scrutiny as voting in a polling station, where monitors from several parties, and journalists, are often present. Despite the rule that home voting is only offered on request, several of the people visited by the election officials at their homes said they had not asked to vote at home.  The election officials entered most of houses without knocking on the door. One man in his sixties was smoking a cigarette in his backyard when the election officials arrived.  First build a road and then we ll talk,  he told the officials, pointing at a bumpy path leading to his house. He denied he asked them to come, but still cast his vote. The officials said a relative or neighbor may have made the request on his behalf. Over the course of two hours, during which the reporter was with the officials at all times, they collected 14 filled ballot papers. When the officials returned to the polling station, they had 18 filled ballot papers. The officials who made the trip said the tally was correct. The head of the election commission at polling station no. 618, Lyubov Grushko, said:  The difference in numbers is a provocative issue, we won t discuss it.

Summary: एक्सक्लूसिवः एक रूसी मतदान केंद्र पर, प्रेत मतदाताओं ने 'ज़ार' के लिए मतदान किया


JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia s Constitutional Court on Tuesday affirmed the rights of devotees of faiths outside the country s officially recognized religions, in a move activists welcomed as a  new chapter for religious freedom .Against a backdrop of rising intolerance toward minorities in the world s largest Muslim-majority nation, the court said Indonesians would not be required to identify as either Muslim, Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist or Confucian on their national identification cards.The ruling reviewed by Reuters followed a legal challenge by followers of some of Indonesia s indigenous faiths. Bonar Tigor Naipospos from the Setara Institute, a group that advocates for religious harmony, said Indonesians who refused to embrace one of the regulated religions on their identity cards had limited access to education, restricted employment opportunities and were denied legal marriage. The Court recommended that a seventh, catch-all category be created -  Believers of the Faith  - for ID cards. This is a new chapter for religious freedom in Indonesia for both government and followers of indigenous religions,  Naipospos said.  This is a door for the government to recognize their rights. A spokesman for Indonesia s president Joko Widodo could not immediately be reached for comment.Indonesia s founding constitution says the state is based on the belief in the  One and Only God  but guarantees  each and every citizen the freedom of religion and worship .However, blasphemy laws passed in 1965 stipulated only six religions would be protected. Subsequent regulations and laws effectively enshrined those as the only religions recognized by the state. The ruling (on Tuesday) means the end of Indonesia recognizing only six religions,  said Andreas Harsono of Human Rights Watch.In the 2000 census, about 400,000 people identified as holding beliefs outside the six main religions, although Harsono said this probably underestimated the extent of believers in non-recognized faiths.Across Indonesia s vast chain of islands, more than 200 distinctive native faiths, such as the Sundanese people s Wiwitan, the Dayak s Kaharingan and the Torajan s Aluk To Dolo survived even as Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam dominated during different eras.Its people also blended elements of the major religions over time and infused them with animist and mystical beliefs. The court ruling should also apply to followers of non-indigenous religions such as Baha i and Judaism that are not formally recognized in Indonesia, said Nia Sjarifudin of the Unity in Diversity Alliance.  In recent decades, Indonesia s reputation for tolerance has been tarnished as its unique syncretic form of Islam has been challenged by more fundamentalist interpretations imported from the Middle East.In the past year, an alliance of Islamist hardliners pushed successfully for the imprisonment of then Governor of Jakarta Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, an ethnic Chinese Christian, for insulting Islam under the 1965 blasphemy laws.Atheism is not legal in Indonesia, and non-believers have also been charged with blasphemy.

Summary: इंडोनेशियाई अदालत ने ऐतिहासिक फैसले में मूल धर्मों को मान्यता दी


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Energy firm Florida Power & Light (FPL) said on Wednesday it could shut its four nuclear reactors in the path of Hurricane Irma before Saturday if the storm stayed on its current path.   Based on the current track, we would expect severe weather in Florida starting Saturday, meaning we would potentially shut down before that point,  spokesman Peter Robbins said in an email. The company, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Inc, is watching the weather and would adjust any plans as necessary, Robbins said. The trajectory of Irma, a Category 5 storm with winds of 185 miles per hour (295 km per hour), is uncertain. Irma, which the U.S. National Hurricane Center said was the strongest Atlantic storm on record, was expected to pass near or just north of Puerto Rico on Wednesday before scraping the Dominican Republic on Thursday. FPL operates the St. Lucie nuclear power plant on Hutchinson Island, a barrier island on the Atlantic about 55 miles (88 km) north of West Palm Beach. Two reactors generate 2,000 megawatts of electricity, enough power to supply more than 1 million homes.   It also operates Turkey Point nuclear power station on Biscayne Bay, about 24 miles south of Miami. That has two reactors that generate about 1,600 megawatts of electricity, or enough for about 900,000 homes.  Robbins said the plants were designed to withstand extreme natural events including hurricanes and serious floods.

Summary: इरमा के रास्ते में रहने पर फ्लोरिडा के दो परमाणु संयंत्रों के बंद होने की संभावना


BEIJING (Reuters) - Meetings between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing this week will focus on addressing trade imbalances between the two countries, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Wednesday.  Ross was speaking at a signing ceremony in the Chinese capital for commercial deals worth about $9 billion on Trump’s visit. Trump has ratcheted up his criticism of China’s massive trade surplus with the U.S. - calling it “embarrassing” and “horrible” last week - and has accused Beijing of unfair trade practices, fuelling worries of increased tension between the world’s two largest trading countries. “Addressing the imbalance in China trade has been the central focus of collaborative discussions between President Trump and President Xi and achieving fair and reciprocal treatment for the companies is a shared objective,” Ross said. Data on Wednesday showed China’s exports to the U.S. rose 8.3 percent in October on the year, while imports grew 4.3 percent. That led to a trade surplus of $26.62 billion with the U.S. last month, down from September’s record $28.08 billion, but higher than recent trends. Deals signed on Wednesday included a pledge by Chinese ecommerce company JD.com  to buy more than $2 billion of food products from the U.S. over three years and a pact for Reignwood International to buy additional helicopters from U.S. firm Bell Helicopter.  While 19 deals were signed on Wednesday, some in the U.S. business community have expressed worry that contract wins could come at the expense of resolving long-standing complaints over market access restrictions in China. At the ceremony, China’s vice premier Wang Yang said deals signed between China and U.S. firms would “contribute to the stabilization of the general and overall economic relations between the two countries”. The ceremony was a prelude to a “more important” signing ceremony set for Thursday, he added. Among the companies expected to sign deals on Thursday are Qualcomm, Boeing and Goldman Sachs. Chinese commerce minister Zhong Shan also attended the event in the Great Hall of the People next to Tiananmen Square.

Summary: वाणिज्य सचिव का कहना है कि ट्रम्प-शी वार्ता व्यापार असंतुलन को दूर करेगी


BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel said her conservative bloc would begin exploratory talks next week on forming a three-way German coalition government with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and the environmentalist Greens. Merkel s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), would hold talks with the FDP and Greens separately next Wednesday, she said.  Then on Friday, October 20th we will have a first round of exploratory talks with all partners,  Merkel told a joint news conference with CSU leader Horst Seehofer on Monday. Merkel s CDU appeared to make a concession to the CSU on Sunday by agreeing to put a number on how many people Germany would accept per year on humanitarian grounds. Merkel said she was pleased with the compromise, which was  a very, very good basis to go into exploratory talks .

Summary: मर्केल का कहना है कि वह अगले सप्ताह तीन-तरफा जर्मन गठबंधन वार्ता शुरू करेंगी


BERLIN (Reuters) - Turnout in Germany s national election was slightly lower at 1200 GMT than at the same time four years ago, the Federal Returning Officer said in a statement on Sunday. At 1200 GMT, 41.1 percent of registered voters had cast a ballot, compared to 41.4 percent in 2013. That masked considerable variation across the country. Earlier, North Rhine- Westphalia, the country s most populous state, had reported a 3 percent increase in turnout.

Summary: जर्मन चुनाव में मतदान 2013 की तुलना में थोड़ा कमः अधिकारी


CANNES, France (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump cannot stop momentum to tackle climate change, former U.S. vice-president Al Gore said on Monday as he promoted his latest film on global warming at the Cannes Film Festival. “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power” is the follow up to “An Inconvenient Truth”, the documentary credited with bringing climate change into mainstream political discourse in the United States a decade ago.  Shot mostly before Trump’s election, it features the Republican candidate on the campaign trail promising to abolish environmental regulations and boost the coal and oil industries. At one point Trump tells a rally: “We need some global warming — it’s freezing!” But with legal and political obstacles, Gore said Trump would be unable to stop the momentum that would shift society away from fossil fuels. “We now know after four months of the Trump administration, no one person, not even a president, can stop the climate movement,” Gore told a news conference at the French film festival. “The courts have blocked parts of what President Trump has attempted and the Congress has refused to act on other parts of his agenda. The American people are determined to continue making progress and will do so,” he added. Since he took office, Trump’s administration has moved to unwind environmental rules but frustrated some conservatives by entertaining the idea of keeping the United States in a global pact to fight climate change. Gore expressed hope that Trump would opt not to quit the 2015 Paris deal on climate change signed by most countries in the world. “I do believe that there is a better-than-even chance that he will surprise many by keeping the U.S. within the Paris agreement. I don’t know that he will but I think there is a chance that he will.” “An Inconvenient Sequel” premiered at the Sundance Festival in January to mixed reviews.  Variety said it was “likely to be another event, a part of the conversation, a movie that glories, once again, in the incisive power of its inconvenience”.  But the Hollywood Reporter said the documentary’s big weakness was that Gore failed to tackle Trump strongly enough. “Quite possibly, Gore thinks talking at this point would jeopardize any influence he might have in the soon-to-be gold-plated Oval Office,” it wrote in January. “But this is one area in which the movie cannot inspire hope for the future.”

Summary: ट्रम्प जलवायु पर अमेरिकी प्रगति को रोक नहीं सकते, अल गोर ने कान्स से कहा


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top aide to U.S. Vice President Mike Pence is leaving the Trump administration and will be replaced by a longtime Republican political operative, Pence’s office said on Thursday. Josh Pitcock, who has served as Pence’s chief of staff, will be succeeded in August by Nick Ayers, who served as Pence’s chief strategist during the presidential campaign. In a statement, Pitcock said his departure was voluntary and that it was time to “transition to the private sector.” Ayers most recently was advising an outside political group, America First Policies, that supports President Donald Trump. The group came under fire from some Republicans for running a series of ads this week that criticized Republican Senator Dean Heller of Nevada for opposing the healthcare bill currently before the Senate. In a statement, Ayers said, “I am honored with the trust the vice president has in me and excited to serve in this capacity.”  Pence has emerged as a crucial member of Trump’s team, serving as his top liaison to Congress as it has struggled to pass healthcare reform and looks to tackle tax-reform legislation later this year. Ayers has advised former Minnesota Governor and Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty and former Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue, now the U.S. secretary of agriculture, among other Republicans.

Summary: उपराष्ट्रपति पेंस ने शीर्ष सहयोगी के इस्तीफे के बाद राजनीतिक कार्यकर्ता को नियुक्त किया


(Reuters) - Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that a media report that President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump were to meet in May was “wishful thinking”. Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that the two leaders were set to meet for the first time in May, citing two government sources, one in Russia and one in the United States.

Summary: क्रेमलिन का कहना है कि पुतिन के मई में ट्रम्प से मिलने की खबर 'इच्छाधारी सोच' है


NAIROBI (Reuters) - The president calls the chief justice a cheat. A lawmaker denounces the head of the opposition as the devil and says he needs a whipping. The opposition leader accuses the president of making a public speech while drunk.  The gloves are off as Kenya s ruling party and the opposition battle for votes ahead of new elections, tentatively scheduled for Oct. 17 by the Supreme Court after it voided last month s presidential results. Last Friday s historic decision, the first of its kind in Africa, was welcomed by many as a rare sign of independence from Kenya s judiciary. It means voters will again have to choose between President Uhuru Kenyatta, 55, and veteran opposition leader Raila Odinga, 72.  But others feared that after a relatively peaceful election campaign, it could open the door to political instability, reviving memories of the violence that followed a disputed 2007 election when more than 1,200 people died. Despite being prone to occasional unrest, Kenya is viewed by the United States and other allies as an anchor of stability in the region. East Africa s richest country per capita and main trade route between the coast and the interior, it has avoided the civil wars that for decades plagued neighbors such as Somalia, South Sudan and Uganda.  After the verdict by the Supreme Court ... I m worried about the upsurge of hate discussion amongst Kenyans,  said Francis Ole Kaparo, the chair of the National Cohesion and Integration Commission, the government body in charge of preventing hate speech.  As of yesterday morning we were investigating 273 cases of hate-mongering in the social media. I believe the number has probably doubled as we are sitting here,  he told a press conference. They had less than a third of that number for the whole ten-week campaign period leading up to Aug. 8 elections, he said. Lawmakers from both sides are under investigation. Opposition lawmaker Paul Ongili Owino, whose Twitter account suspended, is among them. Kaparo did not respond to a message seeking more details.  So is ruling party lawmaker Moses Kuria, who gave a fiery speech on Tuesday denouncing Odinga. Kuria is already facing hate speech charges brought by the commission more than a year ago.  Raila is a demon. He needs to be whipped by a man and whipped by a woman. Support us, including all parliamentarians, so we can hold him,  Kuria told cheering crowd in a speech in the Kikuyu language peppered with coarse words in Kiambu county on the outskirts of the capital.   We went and gave birth to a baby (the election). That baby did not die during pregnancy or during delivery. The baby had started to suckle. Raila then came and stuck his finger in the baby s arse and killed it,  he said during the speech, which was filmed and posted on YouTube.  Later, he posted on his Facebook page,  Manhunt is on tonight for the 200,000 people who did not vote and the 70,000 that voted for that other demon.  The biggest worry in Kenya is violence taking on an ethnic dimension, as in 2007. President Kenyatta is from the largest of Kenya s 44 tribes, the Kikuyu, while many of Odinga s supporters believe his Luo ethnic group has been locked out of power. Police denied reports, which were posted online and repeated by opposition politicians, that following Kuria s speech buses had been stopped in the area and passengers questioned about their ethnicity. Reuters was unable to verify the accuracy of those reports. Raphael Tuju, the secretary-general of the ruling Jubilee party, denounced Kuria s speech to a local news channel hours after it was reported.   That is completely out of order and I would not accept that kind of language. I will take it up with him because it is unacceptable,  he said. Tuju did not return calls from Reuters seeking comment on what disciplinary action Kuria might face.  Manoah Esipisu, a presidential spokesman, said  State House does not comment on comments by people like Moses Kuria.   Kuria s speech came days after Kenyatta repeatedly criticized the Supreme Court for nullifying the August election results. Official results showed that Kenyatta had won by a comfortable margin of 1.4 million votes, but the court ordered the poll re-run because it said there were  irregularities  by the election board. In a speech immediately after the ruling, Kenyatta said he disagreed with the ruling but would accept it. But in a public rally later he referred to the judges as  wakora,  a Kiswahili term for a cheat. The next day, Kenyatta promised to  fix  the judiciary.  Esipisu, the spokesman, said the president used the term wakora to criticize a judgment he views as subverting democracy.  Anything that doesn t express the will of the people is wakora,  Esipisu said.  At another rally, Kenyatta told a crowd that Odinga was a  witchdoctor  because he was insisting on being consulted on the date of new elections.  Odinga told Reuters in an interview that the statements were unpresidential.   When the anger settles, we should have a sober campaign without insults,  he said in an interview.  These campaigns will be fought on the basis of serious issues, not who can shout loudest, who can insult more than the other person.  But later he couldn t resist adding a personal dig at Kenyatta, saying that the president was probably drunk.   It was irresponsible for the president to address the nation when he appeared to have taken one too many,  he said.  I think it is an insult to the nation.  Asked about that comment, presidential spokesman Esipisu said:  We don t comment on rubbish.  (For a graphic on Kenya's presidential election click tmsnrt.rs/2vENDRp)

Summary: अदालत के नए सिरे से चुनाव कराने के आदेश के बाद केन्या का चुनाव अभियान व्यक्तिगत हो गया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is not leaving, President Donald Trump tweeted on Friday, after U.S. officials on Thursday said the White House had a plan for CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace him. “The media has been speculating that I fired Rex Tillerson or that he would be leaving soon - FAKE NEWS! He’s not leaving and while we disagree on certain subjects, (I call the final shots) we work well together and America is highly respected again!” Trump said on Twitter. The tweet linked to a picture of Tillerson being sworn in as secretary of state with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence looking on. Senior administration officials on Thursday said that Trump was considering a plan to oust Tillerson, whose relationship with the president has been strained by the top U.S. diplomat’s softer line on North Korea and other policy differences, as well as by reports in October that he called the president a “moron.” Tillerson has not directly addressed whether he made the comment, though his spokeswoman denied it. The New York Times on Thursday first reported the White House plan to replace him. Asked to comment on some White House officials wanting him to resign, how the matter was being handled and what his plans were, Tillerson replied: “It’s laughable. It’s laughable.” His comments came as he posed for pictures with Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj of the United Nations-backed government in Tripoli. Tillerson visits Europe next week to attend NATO meetings in Brussels on Tuesday and Wednesday, an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) meeting in Vienna on Thursday and talks with French officials in Paris on Friday. He is tentatively scheduled to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Vienna on Thursday on the sidelines of the OSCE meeting, a senior State Department official told reporters.

Summary: अमेरिकी विदेश मंत्री टिलरसन ने पद नहीं छोड़ाः ट्रम्प


MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Russian Defence Ministry on Monday denied its planes had bombed U.S.-backed militias in Syria s Deir al-Zor province earlier in the day, saying it was always careful to ensure its air strikes were accurate, the RIA news agency reported.  RIA cited Major-General Igor Konashenkov as issuing the denial which followed allegations from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias fighting with the U.S.-led coalition, that Russia had killed one of its fighters and injured two others in the air strike.

Summary: रूस ने सीरिया में U.S.-backed मिलिशिया पर बमबारी करने से इनकार किया-RIA


JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered to play tour guide to Christian pilgrims on Sunday in a message relayed from Jerusalem, whose recognition as Israel s capital by U.S. President Donald Trump has split global Christian opinion. A Christmas Eve video on Twitter showed Netanyahu against the backdrop of East Jerusalem, an area laden with Jewish, Christian and Muslim shrines that Israel captured in a 1967 war and which Palestinians want as their own future capital. In the message, titled  Merry Christmas from Jerusalem, the capital of Israel!  he described Israel as a haven for its 2 percent Christian minority because, he said,  We protect the rights of everyone to worship in the holy sites behind me.  Netanyahu named several Christian pilgrimage sites in Israel - including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in East Jerusalem s Old City - which would take visitors  in the footsteps of Jesus and the origin of our Judeo-Christian heritage.   For those of you who come to Israel, I m going to take a guided tour. In fact, I ll be your guide on this guided tour,  Netanyahu said. This would happen Christmas next year he said, without going into the logistics.     Trump s Dec. 6 announcement on Jerusalem reversed decades of U.S. policy on leaving the city s status to Israeli-Palestinian negotiation. The move angered Muslims and was rejected by most world powers.  U.S. evangelicals who see God s hand in the modern-day return of Jews to a biblical homeland were buoyed. But Pope Francis called for the status quo in the city to be respected, and several other Christian denominations were opposed.  The international consensus strengthens our cause and imbues our people with steadfastness,  Palestinian Prime Minister Rami al-Hamdallah said at a ceremony in the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem, traditional site of Jesus  birth.  East Jerusalem, Hamdallah said,  is a Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and Christian city, and there will be no Palestinian state without Jerusalem as its capital, and without this there will be no peace in the region nor in the whole world.

Summary: जेरूसलम से, नेतन्याहू ने ईसाइयों को इज़राइल की व्यक्तिगत यात्राओं की पेशकश की


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Activists in a group supporting marijuana legalization said on Wednesday that White House officials had invited them to a meeting next week to talk about issues surrounding the substance. “I hope to establish an ongoing dialogue with the White House and cannabis reformers,” said Adam Eidinger, co-founder of the DCMJ activist group.  “This meeting is hopefully the beginning of many meetings where the White House will make reforms before this administration’s time ends,” said Eidinger, who has led efforts to legalize pot in the nation’s capital.   The White House had no immediate comment. President Barack Obama’s final term ends in January.  DCMJ had written to Obama, his senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, and other White House officials asking for a meeting. A source at the group said the meeting on Monday would be held with officials from the White House’s Office of Public Engagement, but he did not know exactly what marijuana issues they wanted to discuss.  The group wants the federal government to remove marijuana from the so-called list of Schedule One drugs that includes substances like heroin and cocaine. Activists say many Americans, especially blacks and Latinos, are needlessly jailed and medical research into cannabis is delayed because of the 1970 Controlled Substances Act that initiated the listing. It was signed into law by former President Richard Nixon. Obama has long said he supports decriminalizing marijuana but not legalizing it. He has called for reform of the criminal justice system for disproportionately incarcerating African-Americans for non-violent drug offenses like possession. Last year, Obama, who has been open about smoking pot in high school, said young people should care more about issues like climate change than legalizing the substance.

Summary: पॉट वैधीकरण समूह व्हाइट हाउस के अधिकारियों से मिलने के लिए कहता है


HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Thursday accused unnamed officials of his own party of trying to push him into retiring and likened them to the biblical betrayer Judas. The 93-year-old Mugabe, one of the world s oldest leaders, has been in power since Zimbabwe, then called Rhodesia, gained independence from Britain in 1980. He intends to seek another five-year term at elections due next year. In public, his party, ZANU-PF, has rallied behind its aging leader. But in private its members are deeply divided over his continued leadership and who will eventually take over from him. Mugabe, who has repeatedly said his party will choose his successor when the time comes, said he was going nowhere and accused some party officials of supporting him during the day while plotting against him behind his back.  Others are like those that Jesus spoke about during his last supper, when he said  some of you eating with me here shall betray me . The Judas Iscariot. They are here among us,  Mugabe said during the burial of a party member.  They want to cause leadership change ... for the president to step down. I did not grab power. I was chosen by the people. It s the people s throne, so I don t want with it,  he said to loud cheers from some party members. ZANU-PF is divided into two factions. One backs Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa to immediately succeed Mugabe. Another is rallying behind Mugabe s wife, Grace, and also want the aging ruler to be president for life.  When the day comes I will say thank you to my Zimbabwean family and I will step down so you can choose my successor. But for now I am the one in charge,  Mugabe said. The southern African nation is gripped by a shortage of foreign exchange that has forced some businesses to buy U.S. dollars on the black market, a situation blamed for a recent spike in prices and shortages of some basic goods. But Mugabe, without giving evidence, accused some people of manipulating the currency to  trigger inflation and cause panic buying.

Summary: जिम्बाब्वे के मुगाबे ने अपनी सेवानिवृत्ति की मांग के लिए प्रतिद्वंद्वियों की तुलना जुडास से की


(Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force has awarded Boeing Co and Northrop Grumman Corp separate contracts to continue work on the replacement of the aging Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile system, the Pentagon said on Friday. Though the award for the new Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) comes amid rising tensions with North Korea, the Air Force had asked the defense industry last summer for proposals to replace the aging ICBM system and its nuclear cruise missiles as the military moved ahead with a costly modernization of its aging atomic weapons systems. “The Minuteman III is 45 years old. It is time to upgrade,” Air Force Chief of Staff General David Goldfein said in a statement on Monday. Northrop Grumman was awarded $328 million, and Boeing $349 million over the three-year contract. The relatively small award is a milestone that would allow Boeing and Northrop to continue parallel detailed development and prototyping for the Minuteman replacement. The Pentagon’s office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) has said the total could cost the United States $85 billion. The Air Force has estimated $62 billion. Lockheed Martin Corp, Northrop and Boeing were all competing for the contract which is needed to perform the three-year technology maturation and risk reduction (TMRR) phase of Minuteman replacement. A Lockheed representative said the company was “disappointed” and looked “forward to a debrief about the selection.” Boeing’s Strategic Deterrence Systems Director, Frank McCall, said in a statement, “Since the first Minuteman launch in 1961, the U.S. Air Force has relied on our technologies for a safe, secure and reliable ICBM force.” Boeing provided the Minuteman III missile for the current ground-based nuclear ICBM system.  Northrop Grumman’s chief Wes Bush said in a statement, “We look forward to the opportunity to provide the nation with a modern strategic deterrent system that is secure, resilient and affordable.”  Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson said, “We are moving forward with modernization of the ground-based leg of the nuclear triad.”  Modernization of the U.S. nuclear force was expected to cost more than $350 billion over the next decade. The United States plans to replace its aging systems, including bombs, nuclear bombers, missiles and submarines. Some analysts estimated the cost at $1 trillion over 30 years. “Our missiles were built in the 1970s. Things just wear out, and it becomes more expensive to maintain them than to replace them,” Wilson said.

Summary: अमेरिकी वायु सेना ने आई. सी. बी. एम. प्रतिस्थापन के लिए बोइंग, नॉर्थरोप को अनुबंध प्रदान किए


(Reuters) - A federal judge on Thursday ordered Virginia to reopen its voter registration window and allow residents to continue to sign up through midnight Friday, after its online registration portal was unavailable to many users earlier this week. U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton’s order came in response to a lawsuit filed on Tuesday by the activist New Virginia Education Fund, which complained that the state’s online voter registration portal had worked erratically in the days leading up to the state’s initial Monday deadline to register. The lawsuit argued that the problems risked illegally denying thousands of people the right to vote in the Nov. 8 election. Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe this year restored the right to vote to thousands of ex-felons, a move seen as potentially tipping what had been a traditional Republican stronghold in Democrats’ favor. “I am pleased that the court has agreed with the request to extend Virginia’s voter registration period after unprecedented web traffic prevented many people from completing their registrations online before the original deadline,” McAuliffe, a Democrat, said in a statement on Thursday.  “The Commonwealth will fully comply with the court’s order and extend our registration process online, in person and through the mail.” State law gives the power to extend voting registration to the legislature, so McAuliffe had been unable to act until the judge’s ruling, noted Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond School of Law. The Republican-controlled legislature had declined to take any action following the flurry of complaints on Monday. “The real question is if this leaves enough time to get the word out to people who had been blocked from registering and may not know that the issue has been resolved,” Tobias added. Shortly after the judge’s decision was handed down in an Alexandria courtroom, the state’s Department of Elections updated its Web site to show the new deadline. Representatives of the New Virginia fund did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Recent polls show Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton leading Republican New York real estate developer Donald Trump in the state. The decision comes the week after a judge in North Carolina gave residents in counties hard hit by Hurricane Matthew additional time to register to vote. Similar steps were also taken in parts of Georgia, South Carolina and Florida following the storm.

Summary: अमेरिकी न्यायाधीश ने वर्जीनिया को शुक्रवार तक मतदाता पंजीकरण बढ़ाने का आदेश दिया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said on Sunday that President Donald Trump had directed full federal resources to help with Hurricane Irma at it batters the Florida coast and that his latest briefing on the storm caused him great concern. “Clearly the briefing that we received at Camp David this morning caused the president to have great concern for the impact of the impact of this storm moving up the west coast and the potential through heavy winds and storm surge to compromise cities and compromise lives,” Pence said during a visit to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s headquarters with members of Trump’s Cabinet.

Summary: उप राष्ट्रपति पेंसः ट्रम्प ने ब्रीफिंग के बाद इरमा के बारे में बहुत चिंता व्यक्त की


BERLIN (Reuters) - If the United States terminates the Iran nuclear deal or reimposes sanctions on Tehran it could result in Iran developing nuclear weapons and raise the danger of war close to Europe, Germany’s foreign minister said on Saturday. U.S. President Donald Trump refused on Friday to formally certify that Tehran was complying with the 2015 accord even though international inspectors say it is. He warned he might ultimately terminate the agreement. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel told Deutschlandfunk radio that Trump had sent a “difficult and dangerous signal” when the U.S. administration was also dealing with the North Korea nuclear crisis. “My big concern is that what is happening in Iran or with Iran from the U.S. perspective will not remain an Iranian issue but many others in the world will consider whether they themselves should acquire nuclear weapons too given that such agreements are being destroyed,” Gabriel said. “And then our children and grandchildren will grow up in a very dangerous world,” he said. He said if the United States terminated the deal or if sanctions were reimposed on Tehran, it would give Iranian hardliners, who are against negotiations with the West, the upper hand. “Then they might revert to developing nuclear weapons,” Gabriel said, adding Israel would not tolerate that and “then we will be back where we were 10, 12 years ago with the danger of war relatively close to Europe”. He urged the United States not to endanger the security of its allies and its own people for domestic policy reasons. Hailed by Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama as key to stopping Iran from building a nuclear bomb, the deal was also signed by China, France, Russia, Britain, Germany and the European Union. European allies have warned of a split with Washington over the nuclear agreement and say that putting it in limbo undermines U.S. credibility abroad. Trump has given the U.S. Congress 60 days to decide whether to reinstate economic sanctions on Iran that were lifted in 2016.

Summary: ईरान परमाणु समझौते पर ट्रम्प के कदम के बाद जर्मनी ने युद्ध के खतरे की चेतावनी दी


MADRID (Reuters) - Automaker Volkswagen s (VOWG_p.DE) Catalonia-based unit SEAT would move its registered office if it was felt there was no longer legal security in Catalonia but so far has not had to make that decision, SEAT Chairman Luca de Meo said on Tuesday in an internal letter to staff. Political stability and legal certainty, along with being based in the European Union, were essential for the company in terms of workers, the economic health of the company and shareholder trust, he said in the letter seen by Reuters. Seat employs more than 14,000 people in the Spanish northeastern region.

Summary: वीडब्ल्यू की कैटेलोनिया स्थित इकाई का कहना है कि अगर कानूनी सुरक्षा पर संदेह है तो वह मुख्यालय को स्थानांतरित कर देगी


DANANG, Vietnam (Reuters) - Discord emerged between Japan and Canada over progress on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal on Thursday, as Japan said countries  agree in principle  on a way forward, but Canada said there was no such agreement. The spat highlighted the continuing challenge to reviving a pact whose survival was thrown into doubt when President Donald Trump ditched it, in one of his first acts in office, in favor of bilateral dealmaking. Japan had lobbied hard to proceed with a pact that could also help to contain China s growing regional dominance, ahead of talks in the Vietnamese resort of Danang this week alongside Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings. Some other members have not shown a readiness to move so fast. Asked by reporters about the results of a meeting of TPP ministers, Japanese Economy Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said  (they) agree in principle , adding that the ministers had finalised  a list of suspensions  - clauses that would be suspended to avoid renegotiating the whole agreement. But Candian Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne later said on Twitter:  Despite reports, there is no agreement in principle on TPP.  The TPP aims to eliminate tariffs on industrial and farm products across a bloc whose trade totalled $356 billion last year. It also has provisions for protecting everything from labor rights to the environment to intellectual property - one of the main sticking points. Canada, whose economy is the second biggest among the TPP-11 after Japan, said on Wednesday it would not be rushed into a revived TPP deal. Like Mexico, its position is further complicated by renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the Trump administration. Mexico s trade minister said on Thursday the TPP countries had reached agreement in talks, but he gave no details and said there would be an announcement on Friday. The leaders of TPP countries are tentatively scheduled to meet on Friday to discuss the proposals of ministers. One Canadian official who declined to be named said ministers from different countries may have had different interpretations of Thursday s discussions. Options discussed by the TPP countries have included suspending some provisions of the original agreement to avoid having to renegotiate it and potentially to entice the United States back in the long term. Trump and other APEC leaders, including President Xi Jinping of China and Russian President Vladimir Putin, will meet on Friday in Danang. APEC trade and foreign ministers separately ended a meeting on Thursday with a  very good outcome , despite differing views on trade and protectionism, Vietnamese Trade Minister Tran Tuan Anh said.  Ministerial talks on a communique for the APEC leaders were extended into a second day on Thursday in the face of U.S. demands for changes to the language used concerning issues such as free trade and protectionism, officials at the talks said.

Summary: जापान ने टी. पी. पी. व्यापार वार्ता में प्रगति की सराहना की, लेकिन मतभेद संदेह पैदा करता है


LOUISVILLE/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A man has been arrested for assaulting U.S. Senator Rand Paul  at his Kentucky home on Friday and causing a “minor injury,” the state police said. Rene Boucher, 59, of Bowling Green, Kentucky, was arrested and charged with one count of fourth-degree assault causing minor injury, the Kentucky State Police said in a statement on Saturday. Paul and Boucher were acquaintances, said Jeremy Hodges, a state police spokesman, who declined to say what led to the incident.  Paul’s office said in a statement the former Republican presidential candidate “was blindsided and the victim of an assault. The assailant was arrested, and it is now a matter for the police. Senator Paul is fine.” His office did not immediately respond to questions about the extent of any injuries the 54-year-old senator may have suffered or the circumstances of the incident. Hodges said Paul’s injuries were minor and did not require transport to a hospital. Boucher was booked into the Warren County Regional Jail. He was released on Saturday after posting a $7,500 bond, Captain Chip Olney of the facility said by phone. Boucher is scheduled to appear in court on Thursday, Olney said. It was unclear if Boucher has an attorney, and he could not be reached for comment late on Saturday. Paul, an ophthalmologist, dropped out of the race for president in February 2016 and successfully ran for re-election as a senator. In September, Paul opposed a partial repeal of healthcare reforms adopted under former Democratic President Barack Obama, angering President Donald Trump, a Republican. Paul last month played golf with Trump and discussed tax reform proposals.

Summary: सीनेटर रैंड पॉल पर हमले में गिरफ्तार केंटकी व्यक्ति को जमानत पर रिहा कर दिया गया


WASHINGTON/PALM BEACH (Reuters) - Hours after a poison gas attack in Syria killed dozens of civilians on Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s intelligence advisers provided evidence Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad was behind the atrocity, officials said. Trump, who had long said the top U.S. priority in Syria should be to fight Islamic State, immediately ordered a list of options to punish Assad, according to senior officials who took part in the flurry of closed-door meetings that played out over two days. Confronting his first foreign policy crisis, Trump relied on seasoned military experts rather than the political operatives who had dominated policy in the first weeks of his presidency and showed a willingness to move quickly, officials involved in the deliberations said.  On Thursday afternoon, Trump ordered the launch of a barrage of cruise missiles against the Shayrat air field north of Damascus, which the Pentagon says was used to store the chemical weapons used in the attack. “I think it does demonstrate that President Trump is willing to act when governments and actors cross the line ... It is clear that President Trump made that statement to the world,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters. Senior administration officials said they met with Trump as early as Tuesday evening and presented options including sanctions, diplomatic pressure and a military plan to strike Syria drawn up well before he took office. “He had a lot of questions and said he wanted to think about it but he also had some points he wanted to make. He wanted the options refined,” one official said.  On Wednesday morning, Trump’s military advisers said they knew which Syrian air base was used to launch the chemical attack and that they had tracked the Sukhoi-22 jet that carried it out.  Trump told them to focus on the military plans. “It was a matter of dusting those off and adapting them for the current target set and timing,” said another official. That same afternoon, Trump appeared in the White House Rose Garden and said the “unspeakable” attack against “even beautiful little babies” had changed his attitude toward Assad. Asked then whether he was formulating a new policy on Syria, Trump replied: “You’ll see.” By late afternoon on Thursday, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff met at the Pentagon to finalize the plan for the military strikes as Trump headed to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida for a summit meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. At another meeting there, Trump signed off on the missile attacks and went to dinner with Xi.  Two U.S. warships – the USS Ross and the USS Porter – fired 59 cruise missiles from the eastern Mediterranean Sea at the targeted air base at around 8:40 p.m. ET (00:40 GMT), just as the two presidents were finishing their meals. Throughout the three days of meetings, Trump’s key military advisers were national security adviser H.R. McMaster, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, officials said. In a White House marked by palace intrigue, McMaster has jostled for influence with Stephen Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, who lost his seat on the National Security Council on Wednesday just as the military preparations were developing.   Tillerson’s State Department told allies on Thursday that a strike against Syria was imminent, without providing details, one official said. But the move angered Russia, a major ally of Assad, and appeared to diminish chances of closer cooperation with Moscow that Trump has said is possible, especially in fighting the Islamic State militant group.  Tillerson played down suggestions that Trump was dropping his “America First” approach to foreign policy. And one of the other officials involved in the planning said the cruise missile launch was a “one-off” strike rather than the start of an escalating campaign.

Summary: सीरिया पर अचानक बदलाव में, ट्रम्प ने सैन्य सलाहकारों की ओर रुख किया


AMMAN/ANKARA (Reuters) - A Turkish army reconnaissance team scouted out Syria s Idlib province on Sunday, a senior Syrian rebel said, before an expected military operation to impose peace in the bitterly contested Syrian northwest.  When we don t go to Syria, Syria comes to us,  Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told members of his ruling AK Party.  If we didn t take our measures, bombs would fall on our cities.  Turkey says it will provide assistance to rebels it has long backed, aiming to implement a de-escalation agreement designed to reduce fighting with pro-government forces in the area, the most populous pocket of Syria still in rebel hands. Although Turkish officials say they are helping the rebels from within Turkey, in past interventions they have also sent troops across the frontier. Any incursion could bring them into conflict with powerful jihadists from al Qaeda s former Syrian branch, although there were signs on Sunday that they were working to avoid a confrontation. Local sources said the Turkish military vehicles were escorted into Idlib by a convoy of fighters from the group, which has joined a jihadist alliance called Tahrir al-Sham and disavowed links to the network founded by Osama bin Laden. Nonetheless, the jihadists and the Turkish military earlier exchanged fire nearby, underscoring the tension as Turkey builds up its forces and the rebel groups it backs prepare to enter Idlib.   We will never allow a terror corridor that begins in Afrin and goes to the Mediterranean,  Erdogan said, referring to the stretch of Turkey s southern border which is controlled on the Syrian side by Kurdish fighters and Tahrir al-Sham. Turkey has been one of the biggest supporters of rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during the six-and-a-half-year war, but its focus has moved from ousting him to securing its own border against jihadist and Kurdish groups.     Prime Minister Binali Yildirim stressed the importance of ensuring de-escalation near the border, following an agreement reached in Astana, Kazakhstan last month that was backed both by the Turks and by Russia, which supports Assad.  We will ensure safety in Idlib, and will cooperate with Russia,  Yildirim said. Tahrir al-Sham, spearheaded by the former Nusra Front, which was al Qaeda s Syrian branch until last year when it changed its name and broke allegiance to the global network, has been a formidable military force since early in the conflict. Since early this year it has battled other rebel groups as it tried to gain control over areas including Idlib.  Idlib and neighboring parts of northwest Syria are now home to more than 2 million people, many of them refugees from other formerly rebel-held regions that fell to pro-government forces.      A local resident and another local rebel said they had seen Turkish military vehicles enter Idlib and then travel under Tahrir al-Sham escort along a road.  The senior Syrian rebel said the reconnaissance team went to Sheikh Barakat, a location that overlooks both rebel-held areas of Aleppo province, adjacent to Idlib, and the Kurdish-controlled area of Afrin.  Erdogan gave no details of the operation, but said it was going ahead  without problems at the moment . Turkey s biggest security concern on the frontier is the Kurdish YPG militia, which as part of a U.S.-backed alliance is fighting against Islamic State in eastern Syria. Ankara regards the YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a three-decade insurgency inside Turkey. Mortars were fired from the area under YPG control near to the location where the Turkish reconnaissance team was operating, the senior rebel said.   The Turkish team is on its way back. Its mission has been accomplished. They visited areas of disengagement and locations where the Turkish army would be positioned,  the rebel said. Reuters witnesses, local people, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said earlier on Sunday the Turkish military and Tahrir al-Sham had clashed near the village of Kafr Lusin in Idlib.  Tahrir al-Sham began the exchange by firing on a Turkish bulldozer removing sections of a border wall and Turkish artillery returned fire, they said. The area was later quiet.  Rebel groups that will take part - drawn from the Euphrates Shield campaign that Turkey backed with armor and troops in another part of Syria to the east since last year - said on Saturday they expected the Idlib operation to start very soon. Tahrir al-Sham said  the lions of jihad and martyrdom will be waiting to pounce  against any incursion into Idlib. The Syrian Civil Defence, better known as the White Helmets rescue workers, said on its Twitter account that jets it believed to be from the Syrian military had struck a marketplace in Maarat al-Numan in Idlib on Sunday, killing at least six.

Summary: तुर्की की सेना ने तैनाती से पहले सीरिया के इदलिब का सर्वेक्षण किया-सूत्र


BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The use of armed soldiers to patrol alongside pavement cafes and selfie-snapping tourists in European cities since jihadi attacks risks compromising deployments overseas, military leaders say. Belgium and major military power France, both active in EU and NATO missions, have cut back training to free up troops and NATO planners fear that over time armies may get better at guarding railway stations and airports than fighting wars. Some of the more than 15,000 soldiers serving at home in Europe say tramping the streets is a far cry from the foreign adventures they signed up for and that they feel powerless to defend against militants.   We are standing around like flowers pots, just waiting to be smashed,  said an officer just returned from Afghanistan for guard duty in Belgium, which, like France, has more troops deployed at home than in any single mission abroad. Security personnel have been targeted in both countries but patrols begun as a temporary measure after Islamic State attacks in 2015 have become permanent fixtures as opinion polls show that people are reassured by soldiers on show at home. Italy has had soldiers on the streets since 2008, Britain used them briefly this year and, along with Spain, is prepared for deployments if threat levels rise. Despite their painful history, Germany and Austria have debated having military patrols at home for the first time since World War Two. Across Europe, political debate is shifting from whether, to how to adapt the armed forces to a homeland role, a concern for military leaders eyeing budgets, morale and training. France s former military chief, who quit in July, said it had overstretched the army, while the head of Belgium s land forces told Reuters the domestic deployment was taking its toll.  I see a lot of people who leave our defense forces because of the operation,  General Marc Thys, the commander of Belgium s land forces, said in an interview, without giving numbers. Not everyone agrees. A defense ministry source in Italy said its domestic patrols had  absolutely no impact on overseas missions or on training . But some in NATO worry protracted domestic operations will make key members of the 29-strong transatlantic alliance less ready to deploy to Afghanistan or eastern European borders with Russia.  It is popular with the public, it is cheaper than the police,  a senior NATO source said.  But if the requirement came to send a lot of forces to reinforce our eastern allies ... would the government be willing to pull its soldiers off the street to do that, could it?  The challenge of battling Islamic State at home and abroad, squeezes resources just as NATO leaders seek to show U.S. President Donald Trump they are reliable allies, after he repeatedly questioned the alliance s worth. Given the homeland operations, some military sources and experts say politicians face a tough choice: to expand the army, summon up reserves or create a new domestic security force - a halfway between the police and military - to replace them as Belgium has chosen to do over the coming years.  It mobilizes so many people that we are having trouble deploying people abroad for U.N. and EU missions,  said a second NATO source.  The operations put 10,000 heavily armed combat troops on the streets in France and 1,800 in Belgium after Islamic State attacks in early 2015. The numbers are down to 7,000 and 1,200 respectively, but they still tie up roughly a tenth of deployable army personnel in each nation. They can also be bad for morale. The mix of schools, offices and warehouse hastily converted into barracks in Belgium  are worse than Afghanistan,  said a soldier, showing pictures of cramped rooms piled high with gear. Some 45 percent of soldiers surveyed by the Belgian military in December said they were thinking of quitting - many to the police - as being away had strained families and led to divorce. A source in the French military, which has not made polling public, said of its street patrols, known as Operation Sentinelle:  Sentinelle is a burden whose impact on soldiers  morale we ve never denied.  For now, Thys said the Belgian armed forces are not pulling back from foreign missions but have less time for training.  We take everything into account, our homeland operation and our international missions. If you go up on one side, we have to go down on the other side,  Thys told Reuters. In France, training days were cut from 90 to 59 days last year, according to a defense ministry report in October. A decline of some 30 percent began with the deployment on home soil, experts say.  The longer they do it, the less sharp as a military they are,  said General Sir Richard Barrons, Britain s former military chief.  But once you are committed to this it takes a very brave politician to turn it off.  The new head of France s armed forces, which has thousands of troops abroad fighting Islamist militants in the Sahel, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, says something has to give.  We have to choose how to adjust our commitments, to give us back some flexibility, because who knows where the French army will have to deploy in a year,  General Francois Lecointre was cited by local media as saying earlier this month. President Emmanuel Macron has announced a strategic review of the street patrols. His new armed forces minister, Florence Parly, said on Tuesday they would not be cut but would be made more flexible. In Italy, where up to 7,000 soldiers help police, a defense ministry source said they were moved around often to keep them from being bored - an approach that France and Belgium will both now put into play. Italy has escaped militant attacks so far and troops elsewhere have disarmed or killed would-be attackers - such as a knife-wielding assailant outside the Eiffel tower last month and a suitcase bomber in Brussels in June. But their effectiveness is hard to quantify, and attacks on men in uniform like that in Paris last month - with its familiar pattern of a car plowing into its victims - has renewed fears they may draw fire or shoot in error. In France, three in four voters approve of street patrols, although nearly 40 percent doubt they are effective in combating terrorism. In Belgium, support for the military is 80 percent, up from 20 percent before the mission.  It s a PR operation: nothing more,  said Wally Struys, a professor emeritus at Belgium Royal Military Academy. But Belgium s Thys and others see no end to the operations, which give the military an extra argument against years of declining budgets.   They are part of the landscape now,  said Saad Amrani, chief commissioner and policy adviser of the Belgian Federal Police.  We depend on them.

Summary: यूरोप की सड़कों पर सैनिकों ने नाटो की रक्षा बढ़त को नुकसान पहुंचाया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump declined to say on Wednesday whether he will visit the Korean Peninsula’s demilitarized zone during an upcoming Asia tour. “I’d rather not say, but you’ll be surprised,” Trump told reporters on the White House South Lawn as he prepared to depart on a trip to Dallas.  Trump is scheduled to depart on Nov. 3 on a trip that includes visits to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. His trip is expected to be heavily dominated by the nuclear and ballistic missile threat that North Korea poses. The DMZ is a border barrier between South and North Korea and is a traditional stop for American dignitaries. White House officials say Trump is to visit South Korea’s Camp Humphreys during his visit to South Korea to hail the U.S.-South Korean alliance.  There are no concerns about what message Trump would send by not going to the DMZ, a senior White House official told reporters on Monday. “The message is that we are guests during a state visit of President Moon Jae-in, who’s invited us to make a visit to Camp Humphreys. So we’ll keep talking with the South Korean government to see if there are things that they want to adjust,” the official said.

Summary: ट्रम्प ने यह बताने से इनकार कर दिया कि क्या वह एशिया यात्रा पर कोरियाई डीएमजेड का दौरा करेंगे


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senator John McCain survived a Tea Party challenge when he won Arizona’s Republican nominating contest on Tuesday, enabling him to seek a sixth term as U.S. senator from the southwestern state, according to media projections. McCain, 80, defeated former Arizona state Senator Kelli Ward and is slated to defend his Senate seat against Democratic  Representative Ann Kirkpatrick in the Nov. 8 election.

Summary: अमेरिकी सीनेटर मैक्केन ने एरिजोना रिपब्लिकन नामांकन प्रतियोगिता जीती


MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his Foreign Ministry to sue the U.S. government over the seizure of Russian diplomatic property in the United States, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday. Putin this week warned he would order to take legal action over alleged violations of Russia s property rights by Washington. Putin also said Moscow reserved the right to further cut the number of U.S. diplomatic staff in response to what he called Washington s  boorish  treatment of Russia s diplomatic mission on U.S. soil that took place last week.

Summary: पुतिन ने विदेश मंत्रालय को राजनयिक संपत्ति की जब्ती पर अमेरिका पर मुकदमा करने का आदेश दिया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top adviser on Middle East issues to U.S. President Donald Trump left the National Security Council on Thursday as the White House grapples with internal divisions as well as major policy issues involving Syria, Iran and Iraq. The Weekly Standard magazine was first to report the departure of Derek Harvey, a retired Army colonel and intelligence officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The magazine said Harvey was fired. Michael Anton, a spokesman for NSC Director H.R. McMaster, confirmed Harvey’s departure. “General McMaster greatly appreciates Derek Harvey’s service to his country as a career Army officer, where he served his country bravely in the field and played a crucial role in the successful surge in Iraq, and also for his service on Capitol Hill and in the Trump administration,” Anton said. “The administration is working with Colonel Harvey to identify positions in which his background and expertise can be best utilized,” Anton said in a statement, providing no further details. In a separate statement, Harvey said he left the NSC to “take advantage of a new opportunity to continue serving” Trump, but he did not indicate that he was offered any particular post. Harvey praised the top administration officials and the NSC staffers with whom he worked, and added that he looked “forward to shouldering greater responsibilities in support of the president.”

Summary: मध्य पूर्व सलाहकार ने ट्रम्प की राष्ट्रीय सुरक्षा परिषद को छोड़ा


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Hillary Clinton called on Friday for voters to reject the “bigotry” of Donald Trump’s White House campaign, releasing a television ad criticizing his efforts to appeal to black voters and saying she was reaching out to people from all parties who are troubled by his candidacy. The ad shows video of Trump’s controversial pitch to black voters, in which the Republican candidate urges them to support him by asking, “What do you have to lose?” It also shows headlines about a racial discrimination lawsuit the New York real estate mogul faced in the 1970s. Clinton’s presidential campaign said the ad, released a day after she gave a speech accusing Trump of fueling America’s “radical fringe,” would air in the hotly contested states of Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Polls give Clinton a wide margin over Trump among Hispanic voters, but he is on a pitch to reduce her advantage by stressing he would create jobs for all. Trump pressed on with trying to broaden his appeal to minority voters on Friday, as he met with Hispanic business leaders at his signature hotel in Las Vegas. “We’ve been doing very, very well with the Latinos. We’ve been doing amazing, far, far greater ... than anyone understands. They want to see jobs come in, we’re going to bring jobs. They want to see things happen,” Trump said. He said the country’s GDP growth rate of 1.1 percent in the second quarter was not a good sign for the U.S. economy. “The country has some very, very serious problems,” he said. Clinton, meanwhile, followed up on Thursday’s tough speech by saying that Trump’s temperament and divisiveness made him unfit for the White House. “I am reaching out to everyone, Republicans, Democrats, independents, everyone who is as troubled as I am by the bigotry and divisiveness of Donald Trump’s campaign,” she told MSNBC, adding she was asking “fair-minded Americans to repudiate this kind of divisive demagoguery” at the Nov. 8 election. Clinton attacks came during a difficult week for her campaign, as the release of new emails from her time as secretary of state revived criticism of her decision to use a private address and server rather than a government one. The emails also stoked scrutiny of her family’s charitable foundation, including accusations that major corporate and foreign donors gave money in hopes of securing more access to then-Secretary Clinton. Her campaign says no donors received any special favors. Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer told MSNBC Clinton was only talking about Trump and race this week to deflect attention from that controversy.     Trump countered her rhetoric on Friday by releasing a video showing Clinton in the 1990s discussing a crime bill and referring to “super-predators,” or at-risk youth she said needed to be brought under control. The video also shows U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s main opponent in the Democratic primary this year, calling that phrase a “racist term.” In targeting what she terms Trump’s bigotry, Clinton hopes to remind voters of controversial statements he has made over the course of the campaign. Those include describing some Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists, suggesting a judge could not be fair because of his Mexican-American heritage, and proposing a temporary ban on Muslim immigration to combat terrorism. Trump has tried to sidestep these dust-ups by saying Democrats have failed minorities with their economic policies, leaving them living in poverty and attending failing schools. Jennifer Hochschild, a professor at Harvard University who focuses on race and immigration, said she did not think Trump could fix his relationship with black and Hispanic voters. “General cluelessness about racial dynamics will diminish any possible black support that comes from Trump’s emphasis on job creation,” Hochschild said in an email. “And Clinton has a lot of deep roots among black politicians.” Trump also has been criticized for vowing to deport millions of people living in the United States illegally. In recent days, he had appeared to hold out the possibility of toning down his hardline stance, although his precise plans on immigration have been harder to pin down. On Thursday, he denied he would loosen his proposed immigration restrictions.

Summary: क्लिंटन ने नए विज्ञापन में अश्वेत मतदाताओं तक पहुंचने के लिए ट्रम्प पर हमला किया


LONDON (Reuters) - The British government is disappointed by a vote in parliament to change Prime Minister Theresa May s Brexit blueprint, but it will not stop legal preparations for Britain to leave the European Union, a spokeswoman said on Wednesday.  We are disappointed that parliament has voted for this amendment despite the strong assurances that we have set out,  the government spokeswoman said in a statement.  This amendment does not prevent us from preparing our statute book for exit day. We will now determine whether further changes are needed to the (EU withdrawal) bill to ensure it fulfils its vital purpose.

Summary: संसद की हार से ब्रेक्सिट दिवस की तैयारी नहीं रुकेगीः ब्रिटेन सरकार


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump struck a blow against the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement on Friday in defiance of other world powers, choosing not to certify that Tehran is complying with the deal and warning he might ultimately terminate it. Trump announced the major shift in U.S. policy in a speech in which he detailed a more aggressive approach to Iran over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and its support for extremist groups in the Middle East. He accused Iran of “not living up to the spirit” of the nuclear agreement and said his goal is to ensure Tehran never obtains a nuclear weapon, in effect throwing the fate of the deal to Congress.  He singled out Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for sanctions and delivered a blistering critique of Tehran, which he accused of destabilizing actions in Syria, Yemen and Iraq. “We will not continue down a path whose predictable conclusion is more violence, more terror and the very real threat of Iran’s nuclear breakout,” Trump said. Trump’s hardline remarks drew praise from Israel, Iran’s arch-foe, but was criticized by European allies. The move by Trump was part of his “America First” approach to international agreements which has led him to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. His Iran strategy angered Tehran and put Washington at odds with other signatories of the accord - Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union - some of which have benefited economically from renewed trade with Iran. Responding to Trump, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Friday on television that Tehran was committed to the deal and accused Trump of making baseless accusations. “The Iranian nation has not and will never bow to any foreign pressure,” he said. “Iran and the deal are stronger than ever.” European allies have warned of a split with the United States over the nuclear agreement and say that putting it in limbo as Trump has done undermines U.S. credibility abroad, especially as international inspectors say Iran is in compliance with the accord.                 The chief of the U.N. atomic watchdog reiterated that Iran was under the world’s “most robust nuclear verification regime.” “The nuclear-related commitments undertaken by Iran under the JCPOA are being implemented,” Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency said, referring to the deal by its formal name. U.S. Democrats expressed skepticism at Trump’s decision. Senator Ben Cardin said: “At a moment when the United States and its allies face a nuclear crisis with North Korea, the president has manufactured a new crisis that will isolate us from our allies and partners.” While Trump did not pull the United States out of the agreement, he gave the U.S. Congress 60 days to decide whether to reimpose economic sanctions on Tehran that were lifted under the pact. If Congress reimposes the sanctions, the United States would in effect be in violation of the terms of the nuclear deal and it would likely fall apart. If lawmakers do nothing, the deal remains in place. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker was working on amending the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act law to include “trigger points” that if crossed by Iran would automatically reimpose U.S. sanctions. The trigger points would address strengthening nuclear inspections, Iran’s ballistic missile program and eliminate the deal’s “sunset clauses” under which some of the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program expire over time.  Trump directed U.S. intelligence agencies to probe whether Iran might be working with North Korea on its weapons programs. The president, who took office in January, had reluctantly certified the agreement twice before but has repeatedly blasted it as “the worst deal ever.” It was negotiated under his predecessor, former President Barack Obama. Trump warned that if “we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated.” “We’ll see what happens over the next short period of time and I can do that instantaneously,” he told reporters when asked why he did not choose to scrap the deal now. The Trump administration designated the entire Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps under an executive order targeting terrorists. The administration stopped short of labeling the group a Foreign Terrorist Organization, a list maintained by the State Department. The Revolutionary Guard is the single most dominant player in Iran’s security, political, and economic systems and wields enormous influence in Iran’s domestic and foreign policies. It had already previously been sanctioned by the United States under other authorities, and the immediate impact of Friday’s measure is likely to be symbolic. The U.S. military said on Friday it was identifying new areas where it could work with allies to put pressure on Iran in support of Trump’s new strategy and was reviewing the positioning of U.S. forces. But U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said no changes in force posture had been made yet, and Iran had not responded to Trump’s announcement with any provocative acts so far.

Summary: अमेरिकी नीति में बड़े बदलाव के लिए ईरान परमाणु समझौते पर ट्रम्प के हमलों को झटका


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Protesters will get public sites for demonstrations during Republican Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, a major federal land agency said on Thursday, after being threatened with a lawsuit from civil rights lawyers who accused it of quashing dissent. Up to 900,000 people are expected to pack into the U.S.  capital for the New York businessman’s Jan. 20 swearing-in to his first political office. Some plan to protest Trump’s more controversial promises, including plans to build a wall along the Mexican border and deport illegal immigrants. Only three of the more than 30 groups seeking to stage rallies either protesting or celebrating Trump’s election independently of the Trump Presidential Inaugural Committee have received permits to use National Park Service land before, during or after Trump’s inauguration. The agency said it expected to begin issuing permits for demonstration sites on park land in coming days, an announcement that came a few hours after the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund said it would sue if the permits were not issued by Friday. “We believe that this is a significant victory for free speech. They are doing this under threat of litigation,” Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, the fund’s executive director, said in a telephone interview. The Park Service had maintained it was following a procedure in place since 2008 by turning over control of sites, including along the parade route from the Capitol to the White House, to Trump’s Presidential Inaugural Committee. Agency spokesman Mike Litterst said the Park Service would regain control of permits for the Ellipse, a grassy area south of the White House, from the inaugural committee on Jan. 21. Litterst said in an email that the agency was working with more than 30 permit applicants and was still receiving requests.    The Park Service has been under a court order since 2008 mandating it to guarantee free speech during presidential inaugurations. Three liberal groups, the ANSWER Coalition, the American Constitution Society and the Black is Back Coalition, have been permitted to hold events near the parade route, but only ANSWER was granted one for Inauguration Day, according to the Park Service permits website. Some 3,000 police officers and 7,000 National Guard troops from outside the District will be on hand to help provide security at Trump’s swearing in, Chris Geldart, the District of Columbia’s homeland security director said in a phone interview. The biggest inauguration protest, the Women’s March on Washington on Jan. 21, will go on regardless of the dispute over protest sites since it will be held on city streets. At least one protest could come with a cloud of marijuana smoke, as the DCMJ pro-pot lobbying group, which spearheaded the legalization of the drug in Washington D.C. in 2015, plans to distribute 4,200 joints near the inaugural site. Smoking marijuana along the parade route would violate the laws of both the District of Columbia - which allows it only in private spaces - and the federal government, which bans it outright.

Summary: अमेरिकी एजेंसी ट्रम्प के उद्घाटन के दौरान विरोध स्थलों को मुक्त करेगी


DHAKA (Reuters) - A 27-year-old Rohingya Muslim woman refugee from Myanmar will meet Pope Francis on Friday in the hope he can help her find justice for the abuse she says she suffered at the hands of Myanmar soldiers, including rape. Pope Francis, visiting both Myanmar and Bangladesh this week, has called for decisive measures to resolve the political reasons that caused Rohingya to flee from Myanmar and urged help for Bangladesh to deal with and influx of some 625,000 refugees since late August. The pope will hear first hand, from the woman and other Rohingya, the sort of accounts that have led to accusations from the United Nations that majority-Buddhist Myanmar has waged a policy of ethnic cleansing against the Muslim minority, including killings and rape.  They captured me and some other women, tortured us,  the woman told Reuters in the office of an aid group in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka.  I still bleed, there is pain in the abdomen, my back hurts, I get headaches. Medicines have not helped much,  the woman said as her young daughter clutched at her black burqa. Myanmar s army has denied all accusations of rape and killings by the security forces. It said an internal investigation found no evidence of rape or killings by the security forces. The woman identified herself but Reuters is not publishing her name, or that of her husband, who was with her in Dhaka as she gave her account. The couple said they fled from their village in Myanmar s Rakhine State in late August, soon after the army launched a crackdown following attacks on security posts by Rohingya militants. The woman said that on the fourth day of her 17-day-trek to the safety of a refugee camp in Bangladesh, she was raped by Myanmar soldiers after she got separated briefly from her husband.  I will share my pain with him,  the woman said of the pope, referring to him the  head of the Christians .  Her husband sighed as she narrated how she was raped along with nearly a dozen other women by a stream.  I will tell him about the stinking bodies we saw on our way to Bangladesh. I want him to recognize us as Rohingya. I want my torturers to be punished,  she said. New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch this month accused Myanmar security forces of committing widespread rape as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing. The United States has said the campaign by Myanmar s military included  horrendous atrocities  aimed at  ethnic cleansing .  The pope celebrated a huge outdoor Mass on Friday to ordain new priests from Bangladesh on his first full day in the country after arriving from Myanmar. In calls for peace in Myanmar, he did not use the word Rohingya to describe members of the Muslim minority. The term   is contested by the Yangon government and military. Most Rohingya are stateless and they are regarded in Myanmar as illegal immigrants form Bangladesh. The Rohingya refugees who will meet the pope on Friday said they could not risk going back to their homeland without assurances for their safety.  We should be recognized as bona-fide citizens of Myanmar, we should be assured life-long security, we should be allowed to pursue higher education, only then we can go back,  said the woman s husband.  I want justice for my wife.

Summary: रोहिंग्या जो कहती है कि म्यांमार में उसका बलात्कार किया गया था, उसे उम्मीद है कि पोप न्याय पाने में मदद कर सकते हैं


(Reuters) - TransCanada Corp (TRP.TO) said on Friday the U.S. Department of State issued a presidential permit for the construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a project blocked by former President Barack Obama. President Donald Trump will make an announcement on the pipeline at 10:15 a.m., White House spokesman Sean Spicer said in a post on Twitter. Trump signed an executive order to advance the project, which will link Canadian oil sands to U.S. refiners, soon after taking office in January, saying it would create thousands of jobs. Obama had said the pipeline would do nothing to reduce fuel prices for U.S. motorists and would contribute emissions linked to global warming. A senior administration official told Reuters that Trump will make the announcement alongside TransCanada Chief Executive Russell Girling and Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions. “Our Government has always been supportive of the Keystone XL pipeline and we are pleased with the U.S. decision,” a spokesman for Canada’s minister of natural resources said. “The importance of a common, continental energy market cannot be overstated,” he added. The move marks the beginning of lengthy process, which will involve getting approvals from state regulators. The project could also face legal challenges. TransCanada tried for more than five years to build the 1,179-mile (1,897-km) pipeline, until Obama rejected it in 2015. The company resubmitted its application for the project in January, after Trump signed the executive order smoothing its path. Expedited approval of projects is part of Trump’s approach for a 10-year, $1 trillion infrastructure package he promised on the campaign trail. The multibillion-dollar pipeline would bring more than 800,000 barrels per day of heavy crude from Canada’s oil sands in Alberta into Nebraska, linking to an existing pipeline network feeding U.S. refineries and ports along the Gulf of Mexico.

Summary: ट्रांसकानाडा को कीस्टोन एक्सएल पाइपलाइन के लिए राष्ट्रपति की अनुमति मिली


BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - A car bomb at a checkpoint killed four troops from Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar s forces on Thursday, in an attack claimed by Islamic State, officials and security sources said. Haftar s Libyan National Army is one of the most powerful armed brigades in Libya, where rival factions and their military backers have competed for control since the fall of former leader Muammar Gaddafi in a 2011 uprising.  The car bomb explosion that targeted a checkpoint in Nawfiliya town has resulted in two killed of Sirte Security Directorate and some other wounded,  LNA spokesman Ahmad Mesmari told Reuters. Two security sources later said two more soldiers had died. Islamic State claimed the attack, according to the militant group s AMAQ news agency.  Haftar s forces have been fighting against Islamist militants and other foes in eastern Benghazi and are besieging the city of Derna to try to oust militants there. Thursday attack in Nawfiliya was 80 km (50 miles) from Ras Lanuf, part of Libya s  Oil Crescent  and one the OPEC country s major oil exporting terminals.  Libyan officials are concerned Islamic State may try to regroup there after defeat in nearby Sirte city last year.

Summary: कार बम विस्फोट में लीबिया के चार सैनिक मारे गएः सुरक्षा सूत्र