HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban officials investigating U.S. complaints of attacks that sickened American diplomats in Havana said talk of acoustic strikes was  science fiction  and accused Washington of  slander  while it refused to cooperate fully with Cuba s enquiry. U.S. President Donald Trump said last week he believed Havana was responsible for 24 diplomats being harmed. Washington expelled 15 Cuban diplomats and recalled more than half the U.S. diplomatic personnel from Havana earlier in October. While Cuba denounced the expulsions as  unjustified  and accused the United States of insufficient cooperation, three Interior Ministry officials and a doctor heading the inquiry provided more details in an interview in Havana on Sunday. Cuba had deployed about 2,000 security officials and experts, from criminologists to audiologists and mathematicians, to investigate the incidents after it became aware of them in February, the investigators said. The probe has not ended but so far has failed to uncover any evidence to corroborate allegations of attacks that the United States says have caused hearing loss, dizziness, fatigue and cognitive issues for diplomatic personnel who were based on the Communist-run island.  This is slander by the United States,  said Coronel Ramiro Ramirez, responsible for the security of diplomats in Cuba. Asked to respond to the Cuban officials  assertions, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the United States had reminded Cuba of its obligation to ensure the safety of U.S. diplomatic personnel and was continuing its investigation of the  attacks.  Washington officials have raised the possibility that sonic weapons were used to harm the diplomats, according to U.S. media reports. However, Cuban investigators denied such weapons could even have been used by third parties without affecting the health of others or attracting attention.  It s impossible. We are talking about science fiction,  said Lieutenant Colonel Jose Alazo, an expert in the criminal investigation unit of the Interior Ministry.  From a technical point of view, that argument is unsustainable.  The investigators said the United States had supplied 14 recordings of the sound it says the victims heard during the attacks and recorded, for example, on cellphones. These, however, did not contain anything that could damage human health, they concluded. The noises included the usual suburban sounds such as traffic, footsteps and voices. They were also characterized by a deviation peak of 7 kiloHertz (kHz) in the frequency band of 3 kHz, similar to the song of a cricket. An audible sound would need to be very loud - above 80 decibels or akin to a plane s engine   to have a health impact, they said. Yet only the victims heard the noise, not their families living in the same houses, or their neighbors.   We interviewed more than 300 people in the neighborhood, we also evaluated more than 30 medically, and no one heard these things,  Alazo said. Even if the U.S. diplomats  reports of loud sounds were misleading and the source of the attacks was infra- or ultrasonic and therefore inaudible to human ears, it would be hard to explain how it could go undetected, the Cuban investigators said.  You would need a source that could be seen from a satellite, it would be enormous,  said Dr Manuel Villar, an ear, nose and throat specialist. Finally, only two or three of the alleged victims had hearing problems, according to the U.S. information provided, whereas any kind of sonic attack would cause them in everyone, Villar said.  ANTI-CUBAN MAFIA  The United States has not formally accused Cuba of carrying out attacks, but Trump s comments further damaged relations between the old Cold War foes, which have rapidly deteriorated since he took office. Canada has said several Canadians had reported similar symptoms to the U.S. diplomats but it has not taken any action against Cuba and has said Cuba had been very cooperative with the investigation. [L2N1LB25E]  There is an anti-Cuban mafia in Miami and we are victims of their dirty work that involve certain people very close to the governing circles of the United States,  Ramirez said. Anti-Castro Cuban-Americans such as Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida have guided Trump s policy on Cuba, including a partial rollback of the historic detente forged by Trump s Democratic predecessor Barack Obama. Washington insists its drawdown at its embassy was motivated by concern for the health of its diplomats.  The safety and wellbeing of American citizens is our top priority,  said Nauert. Investigators said U.S. actions did not add up with their accusations. More than 200 friends and relatives of U.S. diplomats based in Havana had asked for visas to visit them between February and July, despite the alleged attacks. The fact that the information the United States provided was late was a major obstacle to resolving the mystery, said the investigators, who declined to comment on the state of cooperation with Canada. So far, Washington had only officially reported 14 cases of alleged attacks to Cuba, compared with the 24 it had announced to the media, they said.  It will be impossible to resolve this investigation without more cooperation,  Ramirez said.

Summary: क्यूबा के जांचकर्ताओं का कहना है कि अमेरिकी ध्वनि हमले के आरोप 'विज्ञान कथा' हैं


PRAGUE (Reuters) - The Czech far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy party (SPD) said on Thursday it would not support a new minority government formed by the ANO party leader Andrej Babis, making it more likely the government will lose a confidence vote next month. If Babis loses, he will stay in power as caretaker while another coalition arrangement is sought. Given ANO s strength, however, it is almost impossible to form a government without it.  SPD leader Tomio Okamura told a news conference his party had led talks with ANO and while there were some common points on program, there were also many differences and SPD had objections to several ministers.  We told them we will not support this government,  Okamura told reporters. He said ANO refused to back its plan to legislate a referendum law allowing to vote on leaving the European Union, one of SPD s campaign calls.  Running on an anti-establishment platform and pledges to improve management of public affairs, ANO won 78 out of 200 seats in the lower house of parliament in an October election. But it has failed to find any coalition partners or support for its minority government among the other eight factions in parliament. Only the far-left Communists, with 15 seats, have not ruled out supporting the government.  The SPD, with 22 seats, had supported ANO in a number of votes, raising the possibility that it might also in the end vote for the cabinet. The fresh rejection to back the cabinet makes Babis s success less likely. Under the EU and NATO member country s constitution, Babis has to call a confidence vote by mid-January. Several parties - including SPD but also ANO s coalition partners in the previous cabinet, the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats   have indicated they may be open to discussions on supporting an ANO-led government in the second round if Babis s first attempt fails. The main objection to Babis is a police investigation into alleged fraud Babis is suspected of in tapping a 2 million euro EU subsidy for a conference center outside Prague a decade ago.  Babis denies any wrongdoing. Parliament is expected to vote in January whether to lift his immunity and allow police to prosecute him. Parties also criticise Babis for conflicts of interests he has as a politician and a billionaire owner of over 25o firms in chemicals, farming, media and other sectors.

Summary: चेक सुदूर-दक्षिणपंथी पार्टी का कहना है कि वह नई सरकार का समर्थन नहीं करेगी


GENEVA (Reuters) - The top U.N. human rights official voiced concern on Monday at the Trump administration s decision to end the DACA program for immigrants who arrived illegally as children and urged the U.S. Congress to give them lasting legal status in the country. Referring to a move to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in six months, affecting nearly 800,000 young migrants known as  Dreamers , Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein told the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva:    I hope Congress will now act to provide former DACA beneficiaries with durable legal status. I am disturbed by the increase in detentions and deportations of well-established and law-abiding immigrants.

Summary: संयुक्त राष्ट्र मानवाधिकार प्रमुख ने अमेरिकी कांग्रेस से 'ड्रीमर्स' को कानूनी दर्जा देने का आग्रह किया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Sunday slapped new travel restrictions on citizens from North Korea, Venezuela and Chad, expanding to eight the list of countries covered by his original travel bans that have been derided by critics and challenged in court. Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia were left on the list of affected countries in a new proclamation issued by the president. Restrictions on citizens from Sudan were lifted. The measures help fulfill a campaign promise Trump made to tighten U.S. immigration procedures and align with his “America First” foreign policy vision. Unlike the president’s original bans, which had time limits, this one is open-ended.   “Making America Safe is my number one priority. We will not admit those into our country we cannot safely vet,” the president said in a tweet shortly after the proclamation was released. Iraqi citizens will not be subject to travel prohibitions but will face enhanced scrutiny or vetting.  The current ban, enacted in March, was set to expire on Sunday evening. The new restrictions are slated to take effect on Oct. 18 and resulted from a review after Trump’s original travel bans sparked international outrage and legal challenges. The addition of North Korea and Venezuela broadens the restrictions from the original, mostly Muslim-majority list. An administration official, briefing reporters on a conference call, acknowledged that the number of North Koreans now traveling to the United States was very low.  Rights group Amnesty International USA condemned the measures. “Just because the original ban was especially outrageous does not mean we should stand for yet another version of government-sanctioned discrimination,” it said in a statement.  “It is senseless and cruel to ban whole nationalities of people who are often fleeing the very same violence that the U.S. government wishes to keep out. This must not be normalized.” The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement the addition of North Korea and Venezuela “doesn’t obfuscate the real fact that the administration’s order is still a Muslim ban.” The White House portrayed the restrictions as consequences for countries that did not meet new requirements for vetting of immigrants and issuing of visas. Those requirements were shared in July with foreign governments, which had 50 days to make improvements if needed, the White House said.  A number of countries made improvements by enhancing the security of travel documents or the reporting of passports that were lost or stolen. Others did not, sparking the restrictions. The announcement came as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments on Oct. 10 over the legality of Trump’s previous travel ban, including whether it discriminated against Muslims.  Trump has threatened to “destroy” North Korea if it attacks the United States or its allies. Pyongyang earlier this month conducted its most powerful nuclear bomb test. The president  has also directed harsh criticism at Venezuela, once hinting at a potential military option to deal with Caracas. But the officials described the addition of the two countries to Trump’s travel restrictions as the result of a purely objective review. In the case of North Korea, where the suspension was sweeping and applied to both immigrants and non-immigrants, officials said it was hard for the United States to validate the identity of someone coming from North Korea or to find out if that person was a threat. “North Korea, quite bluntly, does not cooperate whatsoever,” one official said.   The restrictions on Venezuela focused on Socialist government officials that the Trump administration blamed for the country’s slide into economic disarray, including officials from the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service and their immediate families. Trump received a set of policy recommendations on Friday from acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke and was briefed on the matter by other administration officials, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a White House aide said. The rollout on Sunday was decidedly more organized than Trump’s first stab at a travel ban, which was unveiled with little warning and sparked protests at airports worldwide.    Earlier on Sunday, Trump told reporters about the ban: “The tougher, the better.”      Rather than a total ban on entry to the United States, the proposed restrictions differ by nation, based on cooperation with American security mandates, the threat the United States believes each country presents and other variables, officials said.  Somalis, for example, are barred from entering the United States as immigrants and subjected to greater screening for visits.       After the Sept. 15 bombing attack on a London train, Trump wrote on Twitter that the new ban “should be far larger, tougher and more specific - but stupidly, that would not be politically correct.”      The expiring ban blocked entry into the United States by people from the six countries for 90 days and locked out most aspiring refugees for 120 days to give Trump’s administration time to conduct a worldwide review of U.S. vetting procedures for foreign visitors.      Critics have accused the Republican president of discriminating against Muslims in violation of constitutional guarantees of religious liberty and equal protection under the law, breaking existing U.S. immigration law and stoking religious hatred.     Some federal courts blocked the ban, but the U.S. Supreme Court allowed it to take effect in June with some restrictions.

Summary: ट्रम्प ने N.Korea पर यात्रा प्रतिबंध लगाए, वेनेज़ुएला में नए प्रतिबंध लगाए


BARCELONA (Reuters) - Spanish police fired rubber bullets in a Barcelona street on Sunday in disturbances over a banned Catalan independence referendum, according to people quoted by El Periodico newspaper.  Several people report that the police fired rubber bullets  at the intersection of two Barcelona streets, the newspaper said on its website.

Summary: स्पेन की पुलिस ने बार्सिलोना में रबर की गोलियां चलाईं-मीडिया


DAKAR (Reuters) - A dormant Senegalese rebel movement has called for the abandonment of a planned mineral sands project operated by Australia-listed Astron, saying it amounts to  a declaration of war . A spokesman for the Movement of Democratic Forces for Casamance (MFDC) on Thursday said that it had not been consulted about the project and considers any exploitation of natural resources in the southern region as theft because taxes on proceeds would go to the northern government of Dakar. The opposition to the Niafarang mine comes as the stable West African fish and peanut exporter seeks to boost revenue from natural resources such as mineral sands containing zircon and ilmenite used in construction as well as recently discovered oil and gas.  Both the political and armed wings of the MFDC are strongly opposed to this project and consider it a declaration of war,  said MFDC spokesman Oumar Ampoi Bodian by telephone from Ziguinchor in Casamance. The comments echoed a statement by MFDC military commander Salif Sadio in July. Sadio had said that the mineral sands project was a violation of the terms of the ceasefire deal with the rebels in 2014.  Astron did not respond to emailed requests for comment. It said in June, when the contract was awarded, that work was due to begin in the fourth quarter of 2017. [nFWN1JC0OG] A government spokesman could not be reached for comment. Unlike many of its West African neighbors, Senegal has never had a civil war or a coup and is seen by Western aid partners and investors as a bastion of stability in a fragile region. But Casamance s isolation from the relatively rich Muslim north from which it is divided by Gambia and its eponymous river remains a source of resentment for locals. One of Africa s oldest rebellions was losing steam even before the ceasefire deal and some diplomats dismiss them as a divided group of rag-tag fighters. Yet the rebels still hold garrisons concealed within the southern region s lush forests, which witnesses say are piled high with weapons. Civil society groups have also criticized the mine planned along a picturesque strip of coastline, citing environmental factors. Astron previously said it had studied the environmental impact and engaged with the local community.  They (the MFDC) are united on this and are saying it publicly, so I am afraid that this long period of calm could end,  said Ousmane Sane, a resident and hotelier in Niafarang. A source familiar with the peace talks said that the matter would be raised with the government in the next round of negotiations aimed at settling the question of the region s official status.

Summary: सेनेगल के विद्रोहियों ने एस्ट्रोन की खनिज रेत खदान पर चेतावनी जारी की


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s handling of U.S. security information at his Florida resort came under congressional scrutiny on Tuesday as a watchdog panel asked the White House to explain reports that Trump dealt with a sensitive foreign policy issue in view of club guests. Representative Jason Chaffetz, head of the House of Representatives oversight committee, sent a letter asking the White House for details on how Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe responded to a North Korean ballistic missile test while visiting the Mar-a-Lago golf resort over the weekend. Photos taken by private guests in the club’s public dining area showed Trump and Abe conferring and looking at documents while surrounded by their aides following Pyongyang’s missile launch. “Reports and social media accounts have suggested White House staff used their own cell phones to provide illumination for reviewing documents,” Chaffetz said in a letter to White House chief of staff Reince Priebus. “Separately, one Mar-a-Lago guest posted to his Facebook page a photograph with a man described to be the holder of the ‘nuclear football,’” he added. White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters on Tuesday that Trump had been briefed on the North Korea situation with his national security team at a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, in Mar-a-Lago before and after the dinner. Spicer said a photo was taken later at the dinner Trump attended, and “everyone jumped to nefarious conclusions” about what may or may not have been discussed. “There is a SCIF there. It was utilized on two occasions that evening to convey to the president by his national security team the situation in North Korea,” Spicer said. While recognizing Spicer had denied any classified material was present in the dining room, Chaffetz said: “Discussions with foreign leaders regarding international missile tests, and documents used to support those discussions, are presumptively sensitive.” Chaffetz asked Priebus to explain to the committee whether security protocols were followed during the discussions, to identify which documents were reviewed at the dinner table in view of the guests and to explain whether any classified material was discussed in the resort’s common areas. He also asked for details on how the guests at Mar-a-Lago are vetted to ensure they are not foreign agents and to describe what security protocols are in place at the resort besides the SCIF.

Summary: हाउस पैनल ने मार-ए-लागो में सुरक्षा जानकारी को संभालने के बारे में ट्रम्प से पूछताछ की


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Thursday narrowly confirmed South Carolina congressman Mick Mulvaney to serve as White House budget director in a 51-49 vote that largely followed party lines. Underscoring the rocky reception that President Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees have had on Capitol Hill, the vote came as Republican Senator John McCain opposed Mulvaney along with 46 Democrats and two independents. McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on Wednesday he was concerned about Mulvaney’s opposition to defense spending.   An outspoken budget hawk who has been branded by Democrats  as a threat to popular social programs including Social Security and Medicare, Mulvaney entered the House of Representatives as a Tea Party candidate in 2011 and is a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Democrats have also criticized him for failing to pay more than $15,000 in taxes related to a household employee until after he was nominated. Mulvaney was narrowly approved earlier this month by both the Senate Budget Committee and the Senate Homeland Security Committee, where McCain provided a crucial ‘yes’ vote to move the nomination forward.

Summary: सीनेट ने ट्रम्प के बजट निदेशक के रूप में मुलवेनी की पुष्टि की


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Public refusals on Wednesday by two U.S. Senate Republicans to support Betsy DeVos, President Donald Trump’s pick for education secretary, raised the possibility of a rare congressional rejection of a Cabinet nominee. In an ominous sign for Trump, Republican senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski said they would not vote for DeVos, a billionaire philanthropist and charter-school advocate.  They would be the first Republicans to break party ranks and vote against one of Trump’s cabinet selections. Democrats, uniformly opposed to DeVos, are expected to oppose her as a block. They would only need for three Republicans to side with them to make DeVos just the 10th cabinet nominee in U.S. history to be rejected by Congress. Collins and Murkowski also created a possible speed bump in confirming another Trump nominee, that of Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions for Attorney General.  Once Sessions, who was approved by Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, becomes the country’s top law enforcement officer, he will have to vacate his seat and can no longer cast a vote supporting DeVos. With voting margins so thin, his departure would put her nomination in peril. Soon after Collins and Murkowski staked out their opposition to DeVos, the White House said it is confident that she will ultimately be approved.  Senator John Cornyn, responsible for tallying Republican votes in the chamber, was also confident DeVos would be confirmed. Nonetheless, DeVos’ opponents kicked into high gear on Wednesday to press other Republican Senators to vote no when the chamber begins considering the nomination, expected on Friday at the earliest. “I cannot support this nominee,” Murkowski said in a floor speech saying she needed to make her intentions clear to her colleagues. DeVos’ nomination barely squeaked through a Senate committee vote on Tuesday, with both Collins and Murkowski saying they voted yes only so the entire Senate could debate the matter. Trump’s early nominations, primarily for security posts, had an easier time on Capitol Hill than names now before the Senate. Republicans hold majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives, but Democrats have been on a blitz to try to block the nominations, often raising concerns about conflicts of interest. On Wednesday, the Senate Finance Committee had to suspend its rules to advance Treasury Secretary nominee Steve Mnuchin and Health Secretary nominee Tom Price to the full chamber for approval, the final step in the confirmation process.  Committee Democrats on Tuesday had boycotted the vote, forcing Republicans to scrap a requirement that at least one Democrat be present for a vote. Confirmation hearings for Labor Secretary nominee Andy Puzder have been indefinitely delayed over ethics filings. Meanwhile, the Senate confirmed Rex Tillerson as secretary of state on Wednesday, filling a key national security spot despite concerns about the former Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) chief executive officer’s ties to Russia.  Education Secretary nominees are rarely the focus of congressional debate or political protests. DeVos, though, has faced unusually fierce opposition since her confirmation hearing, where she appeared unfamiliar with education laws and public school issues.  Old-guard Republicans including Former first ladies Barbara Bush and Laura Bush have defended her as a lifelong champion of low-income students and literacy.

Summary: ट्रम्प शिक्षा उम्मीदवार के लिए अमेरिकी सीनेट का समर्थन कमजोर हुआ


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican-led Congress averted a U.S. government shutdown on Friday and gave lawmakers another week to work out federal spending through Sept. 30, with tricky issues like defense spending still unresolved. The Senate passed a stopgap spending bill by voice vote without opposition after the House earlier approved it by a tally of 382-30. President Donald Trump later signed the legislation, preventing a shutdown of many parts of the federal government on Saturday, his 100th day in office. The bill provides federal funding through May 5, allowing lawmakers to hammer out legislation in the coming days to keep the government funded for the rest of the fiscal year ending Sept. 30. Congress for months has been tied in knots trying to untangle $1 trillion in spending priorities. Lawmakers were supposed to have taken care of the current fiscal year appropriations bills by last Oct. 1. Democrats backed the stopgap bill a day after House Republican leaders again put off a vote on major healthcare legislation sought by Trump and opposed by Democrats to dismantle the 2010 Affordable Care Act, dubbed Obamacare, after Republican moderates balked at provisions added to entice hard-line conservatives. Republicans, already facing accusations from the opposition Democrats that they are unable to govern even though they control Congress and the White House, are motivated to avert the first government shutdown since 2013, but contentious matters remain on a spending bill covering the final five months of the fiscal year. With Trump seeking $30 billion in new defense spending in the measure and Democrats arguing that other domestic programs also need more money, congressional negotiators are moving toward a compromise. Republican and Democratic negotiators have discussed a possible $15 billion defense spending hike, half of Trump’s request, according to two congressional aides familiar with the matter. It was unclear whether Democrats will continue to insist other domestic programs get a similar funding increase. Such equal treatment was at the core of some previous funding deals. Unlike the simmering fights in Congress over healthcare and taxes, in which Republicans are pursuing purely partisan legislation, major spending bills generally need bipartisan support for passage, lending some optimism that the negotiations will end next week without a federal shutdown. House and Senate appropriators were expected to work through this weekend, but there were no guarantees they would be able to find common ground that would prevent parts of the government from shutting down on May 6. Congressional negotiators also have been struggling over funding to make a healthcare program for coal miners permanent and whether to plug a gap in Puerto Rico’s Medicaid program, the government health insurance program for the poor. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the stopgap bill, which kept funding at current levels, “will carry us through next week so that a bipartisan agreement can be reached.” McConnell said he expected the House by the middle of next week to approve and send to the Senate the spending bill for the remaining five months of the fiscal year. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said there were still significant differences with Republicans over elements of the looming longer-term spending bill but “we’re willing to extend things for a little bit more time” in hope more progress can be made. The No. 2 House Democrat, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, said he would oppose any more temporary spending bills for this year. During debate in the House, lawmakers expressed frustration at the inability of Congress to take care of the basic functions of government in a timely manner. “We are seven months into the fiscal year,” said Representative Nita Lowey of New York, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. “Federal departments and agencies have been operating on outdated funding levels and policies for more than half of the year. This is unacceptable and it cannot continue.”  Lowey noted that this was the third stopgap spending measure passed since the fiscal year began last October. White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters aboard Air Force One the White House feels “very good” about getting the funding extension next week through the end of the fiscal year. Trump earlier bowed to Democratic demands that the spending legislation for the rest of the fiscal year not include money to start building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border he said is needed to fight illegal immigration and stop drug smugglers. The Trump administration also agreed to continue funding for a major component of Obamacare despite Republican vows to end the program.

Summary: अमेरिकी कांग्रेस ने सरकारी बंद को रोकने के लिए अल्पकालिक विधेयक पारित किया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has invited all Republican senators to discuss healthcare over lunch at the White House on Wednesday, the day after the party’s push to overhaul Obamacare collapsed in the U.S. Senate, a White House official said on Tuesday. “There is movement on healthcare,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, and without providing further detail on developments.

Summary: ट्रम्प ने रिपब्लिकन सीनेटरों को बुधवार को स्वास्थ्य सेवा दोपहर के भोजन के लिए आमंत्रित किया


CANNON BALL, N.D./WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Three days after guard dogs attacked Native Americans protesting an oil pipeline project in North Dakota in early September, an unprecedented event took place at the White House. Brian Cladoosby, president of the National Congress of American Indians, which represents more than 500 tribes, spoke to nearly a dozen of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet-level advisers at a September 6 meeting of the White House’s three-year-old Native American Affairs Council.  It was the first time a tribal leader addressed a session of the council, and Cladoosby was invited in his role as the Indian Congress’ leader. Cladoosby, a Swinomish Indian from Washington state, spoke twice at the one-hour roundtable. He told Reuters he praised the Obama administration in his opening statement for its track record on Native American issues such as pushing to reform the Indian Health Service. But when Cladoosby gave his closing speech, he delivered an impassioned request to his audience: stand with Native Americans who have united with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and block construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, a 1,100 mile conduit to get oil from North Dakota to Illinois.  That plea marked one of the previously unreported turning points in a drama that played out since February and culminated September 9 with an about face by the U.S. government, from giving the pipeline a green light to backing a request from North Dakota’s Standing Rock Sioux to halt construction of the pipeline.  The tribe fears sacred sites could be destroyed during the line’s construction and that a future oil spill would pollute its drinking water. This month’s win for the tribe, which could be reversed by regulators, is a rare instance of protests resulting in quick federal action and the triumph of an unusual alliance between environmentalists and Native Americans, who both say they were emboldened by the defeat of the Keystone XL pipeline last fall. It also was the most galvanizing movement in Native American politics in decades, some tribal leaders said, as Crow, Navajo, Sioux and other traditional rivals united to fight what they considered an assault on their way of life. Cladoosby did not play a high-profile role in the early days of the pipeline controversy. But that day he spoke to a high echelon of power, including Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, White House Domestic Policy Council director Cecilia Munoz, and the heads of the Departments of Energy; Agriculture; Education; Health and Human Services; and the Environmental Protection Agency, according to a senior administration official who asked not to be named and to a photo of attendees seen by Reuters. “The world is watching,” he said in prepared remarks shared with Reuters. A few days earlier, video of pipeline security personnel in North Dakota armed with guard dogs and mace trying to disperse protesters went viral on social media. One of the first videos was taken and posted on Facebook by Lonnie Favel, a member of Utah’s Ute tribe who traveled to North Dakota to support the protests. “I was getting messages of support from New Zealand, from Europe, from all over the world,” Favel said. Until then, Obama had not weighed in on the Dakota dispute even though he personally had visited  the Standing Rock in June 2014. Just a day after Cladoosby issued his plea to administration officials, Obama attended a young leaders conference in Laos where a Malaysian woman asked him about the Dakota Access pipeline and how he could ensure a clean water supply and protect ancestral land. Obama said he needed to ask his staff for more information, but touted his track record protecting Native Americans’ “ancestral lands, sacred sites, waters and hunting grounds,” adding, “this is something that I hope will continue as we go forward.” In late 2014, pipeline operator Energy Transfer Partners made a fateful decision. Dallas-based ETP chose to route its proposed Dakota Access pipeline away from North Dakota’s capital, Bismarck, and southward within half a mile of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s reservation. Part of its rationale, laid out in a report for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which regulates infrastructure projects that traverse certain inland waterways, was that the route would avoid Bismarck and thus pose no threat to the city’s water supply. The Bismarck route also is more populated and thus would require more easements from multiple landowners. Ironically, that 139-page report concluded the Standing Rock route would raise “no environmental justice issues” because the pipeline would not cross tribal lands. The Army Corps’ decision angered environmental activists and unwittingly introduced a powerful new element into the environmental movement: Indian rights groups, who quickly tapped into an extensive network of green activists forged during five long years of protests against TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline, which Obama formally nixed last November. The protest gained steam in February when Standing Rock Sioux leaders asked for legal help from Earthjustice, an environmental law group that had previously helped U.S. tribes and Canadian First Nations fight Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline, according to Jan Hasselman, an attorney from Earthjustice working on the North Dakota case, and tribal leaders. Two months later, about 18 tribe members started praying daily near the pipeline’s planned route in North Dakota. The participants would grow in size, creating a group called the Sacred Stone Camp. The international environmental movement soon took notice, including, 350.org, an environmentalist group that helped defeat the Keystone XL pipeline. In July, the group sent a delegation to the Sacred Stone Camp to see how they could help. In many ways, the Dakota Access pipeline drew its inspiration from the fight to stop the Keystone XL pipeline, according to organizers from 350 and other environmental groups. “We didn’t have to totally reinvent the wheel,” said Josh Nelson of Credo, a progressive advocacy group. By then the Sacred Stone Camp, located alongside the confluence of the Cannon Ball and Missouri rivers about an hour south of Bismarck, had swollen in size to thousands, forming a de facto town of  tents, teepees and trailers, a school, medic, communal kitchen, horse corrals and a legal clinic. The tribal members and environmentalists agreed to seize on the U.S. Army Corps’ “fast-tracking” of permits for the pipeline in late July, which they argued was illegal and a violation of tribal rights, 350.org told Reuters. In this case, the Corps had the right to approve pipelines in general and consider specific local concerns, such as Native issues, if appropriate. The Corps said it effectively considered its due diligence requirement met when it green lit the line in July.  Later that same month, the tribe filed suit against the Army Corps in federal court. While the government’s reversal in September caught most by surprise, a March 29 letter from the Department of the Interior to the Army Corps reviewed by Reuters shows that disagreements within the administration had been percolating for months. The Interior department, which is responsible for protecting Native Americans’ welfare, said the Army Corps “did not adequately justify or otherwise support its conclusion that there would be no significant impacts upon the surrounding environment and community” from the pipeline. Energy Transfer, the Department of Justice, the Army Corps and the Department of the Interior did not respond to requests for comment. The letter presaged the intra-government fighting ahead of the White House’s decision to temporarily block the line. The federal delay of the pipeline “isn’t something that just fell out of the sky,” Archambault, the tribe’s chairman, said in an interview. “We feed (federal regulators) information all the time on everything that’s illegal here.” Archambault declined to discuss responses from federal regulators he received. On September 9, just three days after Cladoosby made his plea at the White House, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg rejected a request from the tribe to block the $3.7 billion project. Minutes after that ruling, the Interior and Justice Departments, along with the Army Corps, suspended construction on a two-mile stretch of federal land below the Missouri River. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said federal regulators, who could still ultimately approve the project, called the pause to make sure the concerns of all parties were taken into account. James Gette, a senior official in the environment and natural resources division of the DOJ, noted in a September 16 hearing that construction was halted mainly because the Dakota Access pipeline didn’t have an easement for the area where the tribe gets its drinking water. Protesters have vowed not to leave their camp until the pipeline is scrapped or moved far away from their reservation. Their concerns about potential spills, it turns out, have precedent. An analysis of government data by Reuters shows that Sunoco Logistics, the future operator of the pipeline and a unit of ETP, has had the highest rate of spills since 2010 than any of its competitors. Sunoco told Reuters it has taken measures to reduce its spill rate. Cladoosby admits he “was really surprised” by the fast moving events after his strategically-timed entreaty. He will be back at the White House on Monday and Tuesday. Leaders of 567 native American tribes will meet with Obama in Washington to tackle a range of issues facing Native Americans from economic development to environmental protection – including the Dakota Access pipeline. (This version of the story corrects the first name of White House Domestic Policy Council director to Cecilia, not Celia in paragraph 10)

Summary: प्रेयरी से व्हाइट हाउस तकः एक पाइपलाइन को रोकने के लिए एक जनजाति की खोज के अंदर


The Democratic and Republican nominees for the Nov. 8 presidential election are decided in a series of state-by-state contests. The key to winning the nomination for each party is ultimately not about the popular vote, but about securing the number of delegates needed to win the nomination at each party’s convention - July 18-21 in Cleveland for the Republicans and July 25-28 in Philadelphia for the Democrats. The following is a guide to the nominating process: Q: Is the delegate selection process the same for the Republican and Democratic parties? A: No. The parties set their own rules. One thing that is the same is that at each party convention, a candidate needs to reach only a simple majority of the delegate votes to win the nomination. Q: How many delegates are there? A: The Democratic convention will be attended by about 4,763 delegates, with 2,382 delegates needed to win the nomination. The Republican convention will be attended by 2,472 delegates, with 1,237 delegates needed to win. Q: I keep hearing about “superdelegates.” Are they different from other delegates? Do both the Republicans and Democrats have superdelegates? A: Superdelegates, officially known as unpledged delegates, are a sort of wild card in the nominating process, but only the Democrats have them. The category was created for the 1984 Democratic convention, and according to political scientists, they are a legacy of the 1980 convention when there was a fight for the nomination between President Jimmy Carter, who was seeking a second term in the White House, and Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. Members of Congress were frustrated by their lack of influence, because delegates elected to support one candidate could not switch to support another. So Democratic members of the House of Representatives led an effort to win a role for themselves. That resulted in the creation of superdelegates. Unlike other delegates, superdelegates may change what candidate they are supporting right up to the convention. There is no fixed number of superdelegates because the group is defined by various categories whose members change from one election cycle to another. Here is who gets to be a superdelegate:  All Democratic members of the House of Representatives and the Senate; the Democratic governors; the Democratic president and vice president of the United States; former Democratic presidents and vice presidents; former Democratic leaders of the U.S. Senate; former Democratic speakers of the House and former Democratic minority leaders. Throw in the members of the Democratic National Committee and the former chairs of the DNC and you finally have the whole pool of superdelegates. Q: What about the other delegates? Do they get to choose which candidate to support? A: Both the Democratic and Republican parties send delegates to their conventions based on the popular vote in the primary elections and caucuses held in each of the 50 states. But the parties have different rules on how delegates are allotted to a candidate. The Democratic Party applies uniform rules to all states. In each state, delegates are allocated in proportion to the percentage of the primary or caucus vote in each district. But a candidate must win at least 15 percent of the vote to be allocated any delegates. The Republican Party lets states determine their own rules, although it does dictate some things. Some states award delegates proportionate to the popular vote, although most such states have a minimum percentage that a candidate must reach to win any delegates. Some other states use the winner-take-all method, in which the candidate with the highest percentage of the popular vote is awarded all the delegates. Other states use a combination of the two methods. States that use the proportionate method may instead use the winner-take-all method if one candidate wins more than 50 percent of the popular vote.  In addition, the Republican Party requires that all states with nominating contests held between March 1 and March 14 use the proportional method, meaning that all the states holding votes on Super Tuesday will have to award delegates proportionally.  Q: What happens to delegates if a candidate drops out of the race? A: Another good question, because we have certainly seen that happen this year. For the Democratic Party, in every state, delegates are reallocated to the remaining candidates. For the Republican Party, it varies by state. In some states, delegates are required to stick with their original candidate at least through the first ballot at the Republican National Convention. In some other states, if a candidate drops out, his or her delegates may immediately pledge to another candidate. There is also a middle ground in which those delegates are reallocated to the remaining candidates. Republican National Committee: here here Democratic National Committee: here Battlopedia: here,_2016 Vote for Bernie: here www.realclearpolitics.com here here www.demconvention.com/

Summary: फैक्टबॉक्सः अमेरिकी राष्ट्रपति पद के नामांकन की दौड़ः प्रतिनिधियों का चयन कैसे किया जाता है


NEW YORK (Reuters) - Donald Trump rode to the top of the Republican ticket promising a “big, beautiful, powerful” border wall with Mexico to stop the flow of undocumented immigrants. Along that border, however, Americans are more likely to call the wall a “waste of money”, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll. The results show that while the New York businessman may have expected his tough stance on immigration to fire up support nationally, it seems to be falling short in a state heavily affected by illegal immigration, and where he is now facing a surprising challenge from his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Asked if a wall would be “an effective barrier or a waste of money,” 47 percent of Arizona residents picked “waste of money” and 34 percent picked “effective barrier”, with the rest picking neither, according to the poll. Among Republicans, 21 percent picked “waste of money” and 57 percent picked “effective barrier.” Most Arizonans also believed it is not realistic to expect Mexico to pay for the wall, something Trump has vowed would happen if he’s elected president on Nov. 8, according to the poll. The results lined up closely with nationwide opinions of Trump’s immigration policy: 49 percent of American adults say the wall would be a “waste of money” and 31 percent say it would be an “effective barrier.” “As big and powerful, as rich as this nation is, we cannot just leave the door open,” said Tony Estrada, Santa Cruz County Sheriff, who has served in law enforcement in the border county for 49 years. “But, we need a realistic and humane process. Donald Trump is … catering to people’s fear.” Polls show Arizona, a state that has voted Democrat only once in a presidential election since 1952, has become competitive. The Real Clear Politics average of polls showed Clinton ahead there by 1.3 percentage points. Reuters/Ipsos polling shows Trump ahead there by 4 points.  Clinton’s campaign said last week it would spend $2 million more campaigning in Arizona before the election. Arizona’s border with Mexico is 370 miles long, covering an isolated desert terrain that has drawn millions seeking to cross illegally. The state’s number of undocumented immigrants has fallen 35 percent from a 2007 peak to 325,000, according to the Pew Research Center, as Arizona cracked down on that population. Nationwide, the number has dropped 9 percent from a high in 2007 to 11.1 million undocumented immigrants. Wendy Cornacchio, a 45 year-old Trump supporter from Phoenix, said she believes illegal immigration is still a problem – but she would rather see technologies like drone surveillance than Trump’s wall to address it.  “I don’t think that necessarily building a wall will work, but the concept of closing the borders I agree with,” she said. Florida is another closely-fought state that has seen large levels of illegal immigration, though by sea rather than by land. Some 41 percent of voters there said they believed Trump’s wall would be a “waste of money”, while 36 percent thought it would be an “effective barrier”. Progressive activist groups in both Florida and Arizona have been using Trump’s hard line on immigration against him to mobilize Latinos for Clinton, who advocates a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants. Mi Familia Vota, for example, says they registered more than 15,000 people in Arizona this year. The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English and Spanish in Arizona and Florida. The Arizona poll ran from Oct. 5 to Oct. 19 and gathered responses from 2,600 people. The Florida poll ran from Oct. 5 to Oct. 12 and gathered responses from 2,610 people. Both polls have a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 2 percentage points for the total group and 3 percentage points for likely voters.

Summary: पैसे की बर्बादी? एरिजोना में ट्रम्प की सीमा की दीवार गिर रही हैः रॉयटर्स/इप्सोस पोल


AMMAN (Reuters) - Sabih al Masri, a Palestinian billionaire and Jordan s most influential businessman, was released after several days of detention in Saudi Arabia, the latest in a series of events marking the worst crackdown on the rich and powerful in the country s modern history. Masri, the chairman of Amman-based Arab Bank, the country s largest lender, was detained last Tuesday hours before he was planning to leave after chairing meetings of companies he owns, sources said. He said on Sunday Saudi authorities had given him  all respect . The authorities have not commented on his detention, which came after his confidants had warned him against traveling to the Saudi capital following a series of mass arrests in early November, the sources said. Sources familiar with the case said he was questioned about his links to Saudi partners among the royals, ministers and officials who were rounded up in last month s crackdown. His case carried echoes of that of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, who announced his resignation from Riyadh, drawing accusations from Lebanese officials that he had been coerced by the Saudis. Both the Saudis and Hariri denied that, but Hariri later rescinded his resignation. Masri s detention sent shockwaves through business circles in Jordan and the Palestinian territories. Masri s multi-billion- dollar investments in hotels and banking in Jordan are a cornerstone of the economy of the kingdom and he is by far the biggest investor in Palestinian territories. Arab Bank shares, which account for almost a quarter of the $24 billion market capitalization of the Amman exchange, ended just 1.44 percent lower at start of weekly trade as investor fears ebbed with news of his release. Officials and businessmen had warned of the reverberations of the crisis on an aid-strapped Jordanian economy already plagued by high debts. Saudi Arabia is a major donor.  Masri has since taking the helm at Arab Bank in 2012 helped boost confidence in one of the Arab world s largest private financial institutions.  The bank, which was first established in Jerusalem in 1930, has a balance sheet of over $45 billion and has earned a reputation of resilience in the face of regional political turmoil. Masri said on Sunday that he would be returning to Jordan after finishing business meetings in Riyadh in the next two days.  All is well and am happy (to be released) and I was given all respect by everyone here,  a Saudi citizen of Palestinian origin, told Reuters from his home in Riyadh. A member of a prominent merchant family from Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Masri amassed a fortune by partnering with influential Saudis in a catering business to supply troops during the U.S.-led military operation to retake Kuwait from Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War. Masri is the founder of Saudi Astra Group, which has wide interests in diversified industries ranging from agro-industry to telecommunications, construction and mining across the region.  Reasons for Masri s detention were not clear, but political sources said the Saudis might have used him to put pressure on Jordan s King Abdullah not to attend a Muslim summit last week to discuss U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. The Jordanian monarch attended the Istanbul summit, however. He is a custodian of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem and has been vocal in criticizing Trump over his decision on Jerusalem. Saudi Arabia, whose relations with the United States have warmed with Trump taking a harder line against its arch-rival Iran than his predecessor, appears to have taken a softer line on the decision on Jerusalem than in the past, according to analysts. Riyadh sent a junior minister to the Istanbul meeting.

Summary: फ़लस्तीनी अरबपति मसरी को सऊदी अरब ने रिहा किया; कहते हैं कि उन्होंने 'उसे पूरा सम्मान दिया'


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is expected to receive his first national security briefing this week from intelligence officials, sources said on Tuesday. Representatives from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence will give the New York businessman a wide-ranging briefing on foreign policy and national security issues and current threats, but not ultra-sensitive information about ongoing U.S. undercover spy operations or the identities of intelligence sources and methods, according to a source familiar with the matter. The Director of National Intelligence serves as the head of the U.S. intelligence community, advising the president, the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council on matters related to national security. “I know that there will be a briefing, and it will be this week,” Trump foreign policy adviser Walid Phares confirmed in an email to Reuters. ABC News reported that Trump will be accompanied to the briefing by two top advisers, General Michael Flynn, a former Defense Intelligence Agency chief, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who heads Trump’s White House transition team. A source familiar with briefing procedures said that it was unclear whether Flynn and Christie currently have the type of active security clearances that would allow them to participate in such a briefing but that they likely held them in the past. Neither Flynn nor a campaign spokeswoman immediately responded to requests for comment on the briefing. Officials have expressed some concern about whether Trump, who has never held public office, will be able to keep sensitive secrets he might hear to himself. Republicans have pointed out Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, when secretary of state, used a personal email system to transmit allegedly sensitive government messages, some of which were classified “Top Secret” after the fact. There was no indication on Tuesday that Clinton has thus far requested such a briefing for herself, sources familiar with the briefing process told Reuters.

Summary: ट्रंप पहली सुरक्षा ब्रीफिंग प्राप्त करेंगेः सूत्र


SYDNEY (Reuters) - North Korea has sent a letter to Australia s parliament, warning it is a nuclear power and will not be cowed by U.S. President Donald Trump s threats to destroy it, according to a copy of the letter published in an Australian newspaper on Friday.  If Trump thinks that he would bring the DPRK, a nuclear power, to its knees through nuclear war threat, it will be a big miscalculation and an expression of ignorance,  said a facsimile of the letter, published by the Sydney Morning Herald and verified by Australia s foreign ministry.  Trump threatened to totally destroy the DPRK ... it is an extreme act of threatening to totally destroy the whole world.  A spokeswoman for Australia s Foreign Minister told Reuters the Herald report was accurate and the paper s copy of the letter, dated Sept. 28, was genuine. Titled  Open Letter to Parliaments of Different Countries,  the note said it was sent from North Korea s Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, to Australia s Embassy in the same city, as well as to other countries, without naming them. DPRK stands for the Democratic People s Republic of Korea, North Korea s official name. Tension has soared on the peninsula following a series of weapons tests by North Korea and a string of increasingly bellicose exchanges between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Trump, in a speech last month at the United Nations, threatened to  totally destroy  North Korea if necessary to defend itself and allies and called the North s leader Kim Jong Un a  rocket man  on a suicide mission. The letter calls for  countries loving independence, peace and justice  to discharge their duty and keep  sharp vigilance against the heinous and reckless moves of the Trump administration trying to drive the world into a horrible nuclear disaster.  At a press conference in Sydney, Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said the note was an  unprecedented  communication.  It is not the way they usually publish their global messages. The collective strategy of imposing maximum diplomatic and economic pressure through sanctions on North Korea is working. This is a response to the pressure.

Summary: उत्तर कोरिया ने ऑस्ट्रेलियाई सांसदों को पत्र लिखकर 'बड़ी गलत गणना' की धमकी दी


TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan s defense ministry on Thursday sought $160 million in a record budget request to develop swift, longer-range missiles to extend its military punch in East Asia, countering growing Chinese strength and an increasing North Korean threat. If approved, the proposal for a rise of 2.5 percent in defense spending to 5.26 trillion yen ($48 billion) for the year starting April 1 would be the sixth straight annual increase as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bolsters the military. The funds will pay for ballistic missile defense upgrades, six F-35 stealth fighters, four V-22 Osprey tilt rotor troop carriers, besides orders for new naval vessels, including a submarine and two compact warships. Around $90 million of the requested missile development funds of $160 million will go on studying hypersonic missiles to quickly penetrate enemy defenses. The rest will pay for research on extending missile range,  technology that could potentially be used to help develop strike weapons. South Korea s air force conducted an exercise with two U.S. nuclear-capable bombers above the Korean peninsula on Thursday, two days after a North Korean missile fired over Japan sharply raised tension.  The research and development is for island defense,  a Ministry of Defence official told a briefing, referring to the southwestern Okinawa island chain skirting the East China Sea, where Japan is embroiled in a territorial dispute with China. The funding for missile development, though relatively small, could nonetheless spark controversy, since Japan s war-renouncing constitution imposes restrictions on strike weapons for the military. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Japan had consistently hyped the so-called  China threat  to increase its defense spending, and urged it to learn the lessons of history and pay heed to its neighbors  security concerns.    Regardless of what its reasons are, Japan s defense spending is increasing every year and has reached a new historical high. We express concern about this,  Hua told a regular press briefing. Some lawmakers of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) argue that Japan needs weapons able to strike North Korean missile sites, so as to deter attacks by Pyongyang. The longest range missiles in Japan s arsenal, which includes anti-aircraft and anti-ship munitions, have ranges of less than 300 kilometers. A group of LDP lawmakers that recommended Japan acquire strike weapons was led by Minister of Defence Itsunori Onodera before he took up his post in August. But such a proposed shift in military strategy would face stiff political opposition from critics in Japan who say Abe s hawkish policies have gone too far, hurting his already soggy popularity.  Striking enemy bases after an attack to stop subsequent launches would seem like a natural thing to do, but that would be difficult for people in Japan to accept under the current constitution,  an LDP lawmaker said, asking not to be identified because he was not authorized to talk to the media. The proposed defense budget will face scrutiny by Ministry of Finance officials who may seek to rein in military outlays as they juggle demands for higher spending on health and welfare for Japan s aging population.

Summary: उत्तर कोरिया के खतरे के कुछ दिनों बाद जापान ने मिसाइल रेंज बढ़ाने के लिए धन मांगा


NEW DELHI/KOCHI, India (Reuters) - India s Supreme Court started hearing a case on Monday that prosecutors say shows how Islamic State sympathizers are using   Love Jihad    marrying Hindu women and converting them to Islam   to win recruits and spread their message. Over the past 28 months, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has picked up dozens of interfaith couples in the southern state of Kerala to question them about their marriages. The women - all Hindus who married Muslims   were asked  extremely personal  questions during the interrogations, two police officers from the agency said:  Did you sleep with your husband before getting married? Did he suggest you visit Islamic shrines before marriage? Did he blackmail you before you converted to Islam?   They were looking for cases of  Love Jihad , a term publicized by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and other hardline Hindu groups soon after they helped propel Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power in 2014. It refers to what these groups say is an Islamist campaign to convert Hindu women through seduction and marriage. Police investigations at the time found no evidence of any organised strategy, and the claim was widely ridiculed. But since then, the NIA began focusing on Kerala - a state along the Arabian Sea with strong economic links to the Middle East.  It investigated 89 cases of  Love Jihad  and found nine to be alliances planned by people linked to the Islamic State, two  NIA sources said, requesting anonymity because the investigation is going on. The NIA will present evidence in the nine cases to the Supreme Court.  The agency declined to disclose its evidence. But in two of the cases it was examining money sent from an Islamic school in Iraq to the women s bank accounts, and in another case a woman and her husband had shared IS videos among people in their Kerala village, the sources said. Opposition parties say the investigation shows the government is allowing the RSS and others to use the state apparatus to further an agenda of establishing Hindu dominance in India, where 13 percent of the population is Muslim. M.B Rajesh, a federal lawmaker and member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which rules Kerala, said the NIA and the RSS were trying to prove that marriages between Hindus and Muslims  are forced unions .   The NIA s probe is creating religious fault lines to help Modi s party win (Kerala s) state elections, but we will defeat them.   J. Nandakumar, an RSS leader who oversees the group s activities in the state, said the NIA investigation vindicated the Hindu right s campaign against religious conversions.   Their first step is to convert Hindu boys and girls, hypnotise them and prepare them for jihad,  he said. The RSS, which founded the first iteration of Modi s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party six decades ago, believes India is fundamentally a Hindu nation.  Since Modi s election in May 2014, the RSS has expanded its membership and influence across India and either it or its affiliates now run key ministries, such as the home ministry, which supervises the NIA, and the finance ministry. Muslims   who account for 172 million of India s 1.32 billion citizens - have been under increasing pressure from the Hindu right. Muslims have been lynched for killing cows - considered sacred in Hinduism - and some of their slaughter houses forced to shut down.  Neither Modi s office nor the NIA would comment because the issue is before the Supreme Court. One of the Muslim men, whose marriage to a Hindu woman was annulled by Kerala s High Court, has appealed the case to the Supreme Court.  The NIA has accused the man, Shefin Jahan, in court of trying to recruit people for the Islamic State, a charge he denies.  The 24-year-old woman, who converted to Islam before marrying him and changed her name from Akhila to Hadiya, was placed in her father s custody by the high court after he said he feared for her well-being. There is no criminal case against her.  India s chief justice summoned Hadiya to New Delhi to testify on Monday on whether she had been forced to convert. In an interim order the Supreme Court removed Hadiya from her father s custody and said she could live in a hostel to complete her college education. The trial will begin in January.  This is for the first time in the history of India the top court will be asking a woman the validity of her marriage and her religious conversion,  said Kapil Sibal, a lawyer and a leader of the opposition Congress party. Sibal is representing Jahan. Jahan, 26, told Reuters he met Hadiya through a matrimonial website for Muslims while he was working in a pharmaceutical factory in Oman. He said he wanted to live with his wife, with whom he stayed for only 48 hours before her father complained to the police.  Our simple love story has turned into an ugly religious and legal battle,  Jahan said. The NIA investigation started in 2015 after the government identified Kerala, which sends tens of thousands of workers to the Middle East, as a potential hotbed of Islamic State recruitment.  Nearly half of Kerala s 33 million people practice Islam and Christianity. Police and the NIA said at least 100 people from Kerala have joined the IS in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. The NIA s nine  Love Jihad  cases were based on complaints lodged by the parents of the Hindu girls and all were found to have links with IS, the NIA police sources said. The agency dropped the investigations into the other 80 cases because no links to militants were found, the sources said.  Across India, more than 270 men and 20 women have been arrested for working directly or indirectly with the IS, according to data at the federal Home Ministry.  But Kerala was the only state where the NIA found a direct link between cases of  Love Jihad  and the IS, the NIA sources said.  The agency says it has uncovered attempts by IS sympathizers to possibly send the women in  Love Jihad  marriages off to marry or stay with fighters from the militant group, the NIA sources said.  Two couples, who were questioned by the NIA last year, told Reuters police searched their homes.  I was shocked when they said maybe my husband was a jihadi, and he could be planning to send me to Syria,  said one woman who married a Muslim information technology professional in 2015. Police questioned her for six hours, she said, and before leaving, took pictures of her wedding album.

Summary: भारतीय पुलिस अंतरधार्मिक जोड़ों से पूछती हैः यह प्रेम है या आतंक?


PARIS (Reuters) - The Paris climate change deal does not infringe on U.S. sovereignty, France’s ambassador to the United States said on Wednesday after multiple sources said President Donald Trump would pull his country out of the global pact. “The Paris accord is a political agreement. It doesn’t infringe on U.S. sovereignty. National commitments are voluntary and may be amended,” Ambassador Gerard Araud said in a tweet. He added that major American corporations had expressed their support for the deal.

Summary: फ्रांसीसी राजदूत का कहना है कि पेरिस जलवायु समझौता अमेरिकी संप्रभुता का उल्लंघन नहीं करता है


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Donald Trump is considering former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for secretary of Veterans Affairs, ABC News reported on Wednesday, citing unidentified sources. Palin was an early Trump supporter and the Republican Party’s vice presidential candidate in 2008.

Summary: पूर्व सैनिकों के मामलों का नेतृत्व करने के लिए पॉलिन पर विचार कर रहे हैं ट्रम्पः एबीसी


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama will propose in his upcoming budget measures to help more than 30 million Americans save for retirement, such as automatically enrolling workers in Individual Retirement Accounts and making it easier for workers to keep savings when they switch jobs, according to the country’s labor secretary. Labor Secretary Tom Perez unveiled parts of the plan on Monday before heading to California’s Silicon Valley to meet with venture capitalists and technology executives about bolstering retirement savings. Obama will present a spending plan Feb. 9 to Congress that serves as an outline of political priorities but very rarely comes to fruition. This budget, proposed in the final year of Obama’s presidency, is expected to hit a dead end. The proposal would also allow smaller employers to create pooled 401(k) plans. The U.S. workplace is undergoing a transformation, especially with the rise of the “on-demand” economy, which will lead workers to change jobs more frequently and face new challenges in saving for retirement, Perez said. Up-and-coming companies that provide goods and services on demand through phone apps mostly rely on freelancers who are not tied to jobs and traditional employer-sponsored retirement accounts. Perez said the IRA suggestion, which has been offered in Obama’s previous budgets dating back to 2010, may have a chance. States have recently created similar programs and fueled some employers’ interest in a national plan, he said.  In a traditional IRA, investors only pay taxes when they retire and cash in holdings. In a “Roth” IRA, they pay taxes on the money they contribute but not when they withdraw funds for retirement. Under Obama’s proposal, employers with more than 10 workers that do not offer retirement plans would have to automatically enroll workers in IRAs.  Perez said the department received hundreds of thousands of comments on another effort related to retirement - a “fiduciary” standard that would require brokers offering retirement advice to put clients’ financial interests first. He said he expects the final rule to be released in upcoming months. The fiduciary standard has roiled the financial services industry for half a decade, and the department had to withdraw an initial draft of the rule in 2011. It is intended to end potential conflicts of interest and protect consumers from being sold investment products that do more to line their brokers’ pockets than meet their financial needs.  (This version of the story corrects to delete erroneous reference to MyRA in seventh paragraph)

Summary: ओबामा ने सेवानिवृत्ति बचत बढ़ाने पर जोर दिया


BEIJING/GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - China called on U.S. officials on Tuesday not to let Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen pass through the United States en route to Guatemala next month, days after President-elect Donald Trump irked Beijing by speaking to Tsai in a break with decades of precedent. The U.S. State Department appeared to reject the call, saying that such transits were based on “long-standing U.S. practice, consistent with the unofficial nature of (U.S.) relations with Taiwan.” China is deeply suspicious of Tsai, whom it thinks wants to push for the formal independence of Taiwan, a self-governing island that Beijing regards as a renegade province. Her call with Trump on Friday was the first between a U.S. president-elect or president and a Taiwanese leader since President Jimmy Carter switched diplomatic recognition to China from Taiwan in 1979. Tsai is due to visit Guatemala, one of Taiwan’s small band of diplomatic allies, on Jan. 11-12, its foreign minister, Carlos Raul Morales, told Reuters. Taiwan’s Liberty Times, considered close to Tsai’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, reported on Monday that she was planning to go through New York early next month on her way to  Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador. Taiwan has not formally confirmed Tsai’s trip but visits to its allies in the region are normally combined with transit stops in the United States and meetings with Taiwan-friendly officials. The trip would take place before Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20 to replace Democrat Barack Obama and Tsai’s delegation would seek to meet Trump’s team, including his White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, the Liberty Times said. An adviser to Trump’s transition team said he considered it “very unlikely” there would be a meeting between Tsai and Trump if she were to go through New York. China’s Foreign Ministry said the one-China principle, which states Taiwan is part of China, was commonly recognized by the international community and that Tsai’s real aim was “self-evident.” China hopes the United States “does not allow her transit, and does not send any wrong signals to ‘Taiwan independence’ forces,” the ministry said in a statement sent to Reuters. U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said on Monday he had no information whether Tsai would meet U.S. officials if she stopped in transit but said Taiwanese presidents did stop over  periodically.  He said the transits were “based on long-standing U.S. practice, consistent with the unofficial nature of our relations with Taiwan.” A spokeswoman repeated the position on Tuesday when asked to comment on the Chinese call. In a meeting with American reporters on Tuesday, Tsai played down the significance of her conversation with Trump, saying it was to congratulate the president-elect. “I do not foresee major policy shifts in the near future because we all see the value of stability in the region,” she  told the reporters. U.S. Vice President-elect Mike Pence told the Fox News Channel on Tuesday that Trump did not regret taking the call. “(The) president-elect was fully aware of the one-China policy,” Pence said. “He’s also very aware that the United States has sold billions of dollars in arms to Taiwan. “We have a unique relationship with that country that’s been defined over the decades since we’ve reopened relations with the People’s Republic of China but I think he think he felt it would be rude not to take the call.” Taiwan has been self governing since 1949 when Nationalist forces fled to the island after defeat by Mao Zedong’s communists in China’s civil war. Taiwan’s Presidential Office said media reports about a January trip were “excessive speculation.” El Salvador’s government said it was working with Taiwan on plans for a visit by Tsai in the second week of January but gave no specific dates. The Nicaraguan government had no immediate comment. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is to be sworn in for a third consecutive term on Jan. 10, however, so Tsai’s trip to Guatemala would dovetail with that ceremony. The White House said on Monday it had sought to reassure China after Trump’s phone call with Tsai, which the Obama administration warned could undermine progress in relations with Beijing.

Summary: चीन ने अमेरिका से ताइवान के राष्ट्रपति द्वारा पारगमन को अवरुद्ध करने का आग्रह किया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. House panel on Friday approved legislation that would renew the National Security Agency’s warrantless internet surveillance program, despite objections from the technology sector and civil liberties groups over inadequate privacy protection. The House Intelligence Committee passed 13-8 the measure to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for a further four years until 2021. The act is due to expire on Dec. 31 in the absence of congressional action. The bill’s passage signaled that Congress remained far from consensus on how to renew Section 702, as several rival bills with various new privacy provisions circulated in the House and Senate, with no clear path forward for any measure. Intelligence agencies say Section 702 is vital to national security and protecting American allies, and the Trump administration wants minimal changes to it.  But privacy advocates criticized the intelligence panel’s bill for not requiring a warrant to access collected data belonging to Americans. Reform Government Surveillance, a group representing major tech companies including Facebook (FB.O), Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL.O) and Apple (AAPL.O) that presses governments around the world to bolster digital privacy protections, issued a lengthy statement Thursday denouncing the measure, which it said may expand government surveillance. All Republicans on the intelligence panel supported the measure, while all Democrats opposed it due to a mix of concerns, including language that would revise how government officials can “unmask” the identity of Americans’ names’ typically redacted in intelligence intercepts.  Republicans, including President Donald Trump, have accused without evidence the previous administration of President Barack Obama, a Democrat, of improperly unmasking names for political reasons, a charge Democrats have rejected. Section 702 allows the NSA to collect vast amounts of digital communications from foreign suspects living outside the United States. But the program, classified details of which were exposed in 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, incidentally gathers communications of Americans for a variety of technical reasons, including if they communicate with a foreign target living overseas. Those communications can then be subject to searches without a warrant, including by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The House Judiciary Committee last month passed by 27-8 another measure that partially restricts the FBI’s ability to review American data collected under Section 702 by requiring the agency to obtain a warrant when seeking evidence of crime, but not in other cases such as for data related to counterterrorism.

Summary: गोपनीयता संबंधी आपत्तियों के बावजूद सदन की खुफिया समिति ने एनएसए जासूसी विधेयक पेश किया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Facing slumping poll numbers and a shakeup of his team, U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump takes a detour from the campaign trail this week to visit his golf resorts in Scotland. Trump leaves Thursday on a three-day trip centered on the grand reopening of Trump Turnberry, which the New York businessman bought in 2014 and renovated at an estimated cost of $290 million. He will also visit his other Scottish golf property in Aberdeen. His visit to Scotland, the birthplace of his mother, comes as Britain votes on Thursday on whether to remain in the European Union. Trump has said Britain would probably be better off if it left the EU. He will hold a news conference on Friday when he will doubtless be asked to respond to the vote. Trump’s trip abroad comes at an unusual time given the political calendar. With less than a month left until the Republican convention in Cleveland where he is to be formally nominated, Trump is lagging in fundraising and campaign organization and taking heavy fire from Democrat Hillary Clinton, his likely opponent in the Nov. 8 election. He is under pressure to adopt a more presidential demeanor and strengthen his campaign organization after a rocky period in which he criticized a U.S.-born federal judge as unfair because of his Mexican heritage and took fire for his response to the killing of 49 people at an Orlando, Florida, nightclub. Just this week, he fired campaign manager Corey Lewandowski at the urging of family members alarmed at the direction of his campaign. It also emerged that he had only $1.3 million in cash on hand at the end of May to fund his campaign, compared with  Clinton’s war chest of $42 million. His poll numbers have also dropped. After sealing the nomination seven weeks ago, Trump was basically tied in national polls with Clinton. But she has crept ahead in many polls in the past two weeks. Trump and his aides see the Scotland visit as a chance to showcase his far-flung business empire and job-creating abilities. Aides said the trip also reinforced his ancestral ties to Scotland and his love of family, with his children playing an important role in his business dealings. But many Republicans see Trump’s trip to Scotland as a waste of valuable time. “It has nothing to do with running for president,” said Republican strategist Rick Tyler, who was a spokesman for  former presidential candidate, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. “It speaks to the non-seriousness of the campaign when you’re taking time off the campaign trail to leave the country for a place where there are no voters.” Trump’s golf properties are among his proudest business possessions and he is particularly proud of Turnberry, where the British Open has been played four times, including the famed “Duel in the Sun” in 1977 when Tom Watson edged Jack Nicklaus by one stroke. Limiting the trip to his golf properties means there are likely to be fewer chances for missteps like 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s gaffe-filled trip to London, Jerusalem and Poland four years ago. But it offers little chance for Trump to burnish his foreign policy credentials. “Traditionally, nominees take overseas trips to build their foreign policy chops,” said Republican strategist Scott Reed. Trump is not meeting British Prime Minister David Cameron, who has denounced Trump as divisive for his proposed Muslim ban and anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Summary: स्कॉटलैंड के गोल्फ परिसरों का दौरा करने के लिए चुनाव प्रचार से हटेंगे ट्रंप


NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders accused front-runner Hillary Clinton of apparent campaign finance violations on Monday, ratcheting up the rhetoric against his rival one day before New York state’s crucial primary elections. Sanders questioned whether Clinton’s campaign violated legal limits on donations by paying her staffers with funds from a joint fundraising effort by Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, or DNC. Sanders has long maintained that the DNC has favored Clinton over Sanders. The U.S. senator from Vermont is a democratic socialist who has run as an independent in his Senate campaigns. “While the use of joint fundraising agreements has existed for some time - it is unprecedented for the DNC to allow a joint committee to be exploited to the benefit of one candidate in the midst of a contested nominating contest,” Sanders’ campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, said. The Clinton campaign dismissed the charge, with chairman Robby Mook saying Sanders was making baseless accusations. “It is shameful that Senator Sanders has resorted to irresponsible and misleading attacks just to raise money for himself,” Mook said. The accusations surfaced as the Democratic and Republican candidates engaged in a final frenzy of campaigning before Tuesday’s primaries. Both the Democratic and Republican primaries are expected to be the state’s most decisive in decades in the selection of the parties’ candidates for November’s general election. Former U.S. Secretary of State Clinton and Republican Donald Trump, the national front-runners, were favored to win their respective primaries in the state that both call home. Victories would be a tonic for both candidates following a series of losses. In recent weeks, Sanders has defeated Clinton in nominating contests. On the Republican side, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Trump’s closest challenger, has outmaneuvered the billionaire businessman in the fight for delegates to the Republican National Convention that will pick the party’s nominee in July. By the end of Monday - the last official day of campaigning before the New York primaries - tens of thousands of New Yorkers will have heard the candidates’ closing pitches. At St. John’s Riverside Hospital in Yonkers just north of New York City, Clinton spoke to doctors, nurses and others at a hospital cafeteria, asking for their votes and taking a jab at Cruz’s dismissal earlier in the campaign of “New York values.” “I think New York’s values are America’s values,” she told the crowd. Cruz defended his “New York values” catchphrase on ABC’s “Good Morning America” in Times Square on Monday, saying New Yorkers had “suffered under the left-wing Democratic policies” of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo. Sanders needs a strong victory in New York, where 291 delegates to the Democratic convention in July are at stake, if he is to overtake Clinton. With 2,383 delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination, Clinton has 1,758 to Sanders’ 1,076, according to an Associated Press tally. That total includes unpledged superdelegates who are free to back the candidate of their choice but told the news service whom they support. For Trump, the question is whether he will make a clean sweep of all 95 Republican delegates at stake by earning the majority of votes in all 27 congressional districts in the state.  Total victory in New York would help Trump avoid the possibility that the nomination could be wrested from him at the party’s July 18-21 convention in Cleveland if he arrives without a majority of at least 1,237 delegates. In that scenario, another candidate could win on a second or subsequent ballot. Trump has 744 delegates to 559 for Cruz and 144 for Ohio Governor John Kasich, according to the Associated Press. The count includes endorsements from several delegates who are free to support the candidate of their choice. In Wyoming, in the latest state-by-state delegate battle, Cruz was awarded all 14 delegates, according to a party official on Saturday.  “Lyin’ Ted Cruz can’t win with the voters so he has to sell himself to the bosses-I am millions of VOTES ahead! Hillary would destroy him & K,” Trump tweeted on Monday.  On ABC, Cruz responded by saying that Trump was throwing a fit because he has lost several recent state contests. “The stakes are too high to hand the election to Hillary Clinton, which is what nominating Donald Trump” would do, he said.

Summary: न्यूयार्क में मतदान से कुछ घंटे पहले सैंडर्स ने क्लिंटन को चुनाव अभियान के वित्तपोषण के मुद्दे पर आड़े हाथों लिया


NIAMEY/NAIROBI (Reuters) - When Doundou Chefou first took up arms as a youth a decade ago, it was for the same reason as many other ethnic Fulani herders along the Niger-Mali border: to protect his livestock. He had nothing against the Republic of Niger, let alone the United States of America. His quarrel was with rival Tuareg cattle raiders.  Yet on Oct. 4 this year, he led dozens of militants allied to Islamic State in a deadly assault against allied U.S.-Niger forces, killing four soldiers from each nation and demonstrating how dangerous the West s mission in the Sahel has become.     The incident sparked calls in Washington for public hearings into the presence of U.S. troops. A Pentagon probe is due to be completed in January.  Asked by Reuters to talk about Chefou, Nigerien Defence Minister Kalla Mountari s face fell.  He is a terrorist, a bandit, someone who intends to harm to Niger,  he said at his office in the Nigerien capital Niamey earlier this month.  We are tracking him, we are seeking him out, and if he ever sets foot in Niger again he will be neutralized.  Like most gunmen in so-called Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, which operates along the sand-swept borderlands where Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso meet, Chefou used to be an ordinary Fulani pastoralist with little interest in jihad, several government sources with knowledge of the matter said. The transition of Chefou and men like him from vigilantes protecting their cows to jihadists capable of carrying out complex attacks is a story Western powers would do well to heed, as their pursuit of violent extremism in West Africa becomes ever more enmeshed in long-standing ethnic and clan conflicts. For now, analysts say the local IS affiliate remains small, at fewer than 80 fighters. But that was also the case at first with al Qaeda-linked factions before they tapped into local grievances to expand their influence in Mali in 2012.  The United Nations this week released a report showing how IS in northern Somalia has grown to around 200 fighters from just a few dozen last year. The U.S. military has ramped up its presence in Niger, and other neighboring countries, in recent years as it fears poverty, corruption and weak states mean the region is ripe for the spread of extremist groups. For centuries the Tuareg and Fulani have lived as nomads herding animals and trading - Tuareg mostly across the dunes and oases of the Sahara and the Fulani mostly in the Sahel, a vast band of semi-arid scrubland that stretches from Senegal to Sudan beneath it.  Some have managed to become relatively wealthy, accumulating vast herds. But they have always stayed separate from the modern nation-states that have formed around them. Though they largely lived peacefully side-by-side, arguments occasionally flared, usually over scarce watering points. A steady increase in the availability of automatic weapons over the years has made the rivalry ever more deadly. A turning point was the Western-backed ouster of Libya s Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. With his demise, many Tuareg from the region who had fought as mercenaries for Gaddafi returned home, bringing with them the contents of Libya s looted armories.    Some of the returnees launched a rebellion in Mali to try to create a breakaway Tuareg state in the desert north, a movement that was soon hijacked by al Qaeda-linked jihadists who had been operating in Mali for years.  Until then, Islamists in Mali had been recruiting and raising funds through kidnapping. In 2012, they swept across northern Mali, seizing key towns and prompting a French intervention that pushed them back in 2013. Amid the violence and chaos, some of the Tuareg turned their guns on their rivals from other ethnic groups like the Fulani, who then went to the Islamists for arms and training. In November 2013, a young Nigerien Fulani had a row with a Tuareg chief over money. The old man thrashed him and chased him away, recalls Boubacar Diallo, head of an association for Fulani livestock breeders along the Mali border, who now lives in Niamey. The youth came back armed with an AK-47, killed the chief and wounded his wife, then fled. The victim happened to be the uncle of a powerful Malian warlord.  Over the next week, heavily armed Tuareg slaughtered 46 Fulani in revenge attacks along the Mali-Niger border. The incident was bloodiest attack on record in the area, said Diallo, who has documented dozens of attacks by Tuareg raiders that have killed hundreds of people and led to thousands of cows and hundreds of camels being stolen.  That was a point when the Fulani in that area realized they needed more weapons to defend themselves,  said Diallo, who has represented them in talks aimed at easing communal tensions. The crimes were almost never investigated by police, admits a Niamey-based law enforcement official with knowledge of them.  The Tuareg were armed and were pillaging the Fulani s cattle,  Niger Interior Minister Mohamed Bazoum told Reuters.  The Fulani felt obliged to arm themselves.   SELF-DEFENSE  Gandou Zakaria, a researcher of mixed Tuareg-Fulani heritage in the faculty of law at Niamey University, has spent years studying why youths turned to jihad.  Religious belief was at the bottom of their list of concerns,  he told Reuters. Instead, local grievances were the main driving force.  Whereas Tuareg in Mali and Niger have dreamed of and sometimes fought for an independent state, Fulani have generally been more pre-occupied by concerns over the security of their community and the herds they depend on.  For the Fulani, it was a sense of injustice, of exclusion, of discrimination, and a need for self-defense,  Zakaria said. One militant who proved particularly good at tapping into this dissatisfaction was Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, an Arabic-speaking north African, several law enforcement sources said. Al-Sahrawi recruited dozens of Fulani into the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA), which was loosely allied to al Qaeda in the region and controlled Gao and the area to the Niger border in 2012. After French forces in 2013 scattered Islamists from the Malian towns they controlled, al-Sahrawi was briefly allied with Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an al Qaeda veteran.  Today, al-Sahrawi is the face of Islamic State in the region.  There was something in his discourse that spoke to the youth, that appealed to their sense of injustice,  a Niger government official said of al-Sahrawi. Two diplomatic sources said there are signs al-Sahrawi has received financial backing from IS central in Iraq and Syria. How Chefou ended up being one of a handful of al-Sahrawi s lieutenants is unclear. The government source said he was brought to him by a senior officer, also Fulani, known as Petit Chapori. Like many Fulani youth toughened by life on the Sahel, Chefou was often in and out of jail for possession of weapons or involvement in localized violence that ended in deals struck between communities, the government official said.  Yet Diallo, who met Chefou several times, said he was  very calm, very gentle. I was surprised when he became a militia leader . U.S. and Nigerien sources differ on the nature of the fatal mission of Oct 4. Nigeriens say it was to go after Chefou; U.S. officials say it was reconnaissance mission. One vehicle lost by the U.S. forces was supplied by the CIA and kitted with surveillance equipment, U.S. media reported. A surveillance drone monitored the battle with a live feed.  The Fulani men, mounted on motorbikes, were armed with the assault rifles they first acquired to look after their cows.

Summary: क्यों नाइजर और माली के चरवाहों ने जिहाद की ओर रुख किया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s acceptance of Beijing’s demand that he re-commit to a “one China” policy was heavily influenced by his new top diplomat, who argued behind the scenes that relations would remain on hold until Trump cleared up doubts about a longtime bedrock of U.S.-China ties, officials said. The abrupt course adjustment, made public in a White House statement on Thursday after a phone call between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, followed White House meetings this week involving Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Tillerson joined Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn and others in what one administration official described as a concerted effort to persuade the president that “this is the right way to go, this is right for the relationships and regional stability - and they won the day.” The successful intervention by Tillerson, a former Exxon Mobil chief executive with no previous diplomatic experience who was confirmed just nine days ago, suggests that in a White House-dominated administration, the new secretary of state could help drive decisions on some geopolitical issues.  Tillerson’s sway on other Trump priorities, such as fighting Islamic State, countering Iran and improving ties with Russia, remains to be seen. Chinese anger toward Trump has simmered since December when he spoke to the president of Taiwan and said the United States did not have to stick to the “one China” policy, under which Washington acknowledges the Chinese position that there is only one China and Taiwan is part of it. Beijing considers self-ruled Taiwan a renegade province. China had signaled to Washington that there would be no phone call between Trump and Xi and the relationship could not move forward until Trump reaffirmed the “one China” policy, one of the U.S. officials said. U.S.-based China experts said Trump’s change of tack should help ease tensions and open the way for discussions across the board. But they cautioned that this does not suggest  a softening of Trump’s stance over other issues, including the contested South China Sea, his threat of high tariffs on Chinese goods and his pressure on Beijing to rein in North Korea. But Trump’s acquiescence on an issue of extreme Chinese nationalist sensitivity also “creates the risk that the Chinese will conclude that Trump is tough in his rhetoric but can be rolled if they apply sufficient pressure,” said Bonnie Glaser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The White House and State Department had no immediate comment. Speaking at a joint news conference with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Trump signaled on Friday that he was pleased to have broken the ice with Xi, describing the call as a “very, very warm conversation.” But he also noted that he had long complained that China’s currency was undervalued and predicted that “a level playing field” in terms of trade would be reached between the two countries sooner than many people think. Tillerson’s emerging role suggests that he could be a moderating influence with both friends and adversaries who have been unnerved at times by Trump’s rhetoric and unpredictability. The secretary of state played a role in crafting the “one China” statement but it was not immediately clear whether he or others met directly with Trump to make the case for issuing it. Another major player on the issue was Flynn, who spoke by phone to China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, on Feb. 3, the sources said. As an oil executive, Tillerson had a complicated history with China. He had regular dealings with China’s state-run oil companies over Exxon Mobil’s longtime business interests there, but also developed oil exploration ties with Vietnam, which has territorial disputes with Beijing in the South China Sea. During his Senate confirmation hearings last month, Tillerson raised Chinese ire when he said China should be denied access to islands it is building in the South China Sea. But in written responses to follow-up questions from lawmakers that surfaced this week after his confirmation, Tillerson softened his language, saying that in the event of an unspecified “contingency” the United States and its allies “must be capable of limiting China’s access to and use of” those islands to pose a threat.

Summary: नए शीर्ष अमेरिकी राजनयिक ने ट्रम्प के चीन स्थानांतरण में केंद्रीय भूमिका निभाई