(Reuters) - Nicaragua is set to join the Paris climate agreement, according to an official statement and comments from Vice President Rosario Murillo on Monday, in a move that leaves the United States and Syria as the only nations outside the global pact. Nicaragua has already presented the relevant documents at the United Nations, Murillo, who is also first lady, said on local radio on Monday.   It is the only instrument we have in the world that allows the unity of intentions and efforts to face up to climate change and natural disasters,  Murillo said.  U.S. President Donald Trump said in June he would withdraw the United States from the accord, and Nicaragua s decision to enter the pact means only two countries will now be outside it - the world s No. 1 economy and war-torn Syria. Nicaragua, a poor Central American nation that is often threatened by hurricanes, was the only nation to reject the agreement in 2015, and has argued for far more drastic action to limit rising temperatures. The Paris accord, agreed by nearly 200 countries two years ago, seeks to limit planetary warming by curbing global emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that scientists believe drive global warming. The administration of former U.S. President Barack Obama had pledged deep emissions cuts as part of the deal, but his successor, Trump, has said the accord would cost America trillions of dollars, kill jobs, and hinder the oil, gas, coal and manufacturing industries. Island nation Fiji will host the next round of U.N. climate talks from Nov. 6-17 in Bonn, Germany, where environment ministers from around the world will work on a set of international guidelines for the Paris accord. The latest round of negotiations take place after a string of powerful hurricanes ravaged Caribbean island nations and caused billions of dollars in damage along the Texas and Florida coastlines. Climate scientists have said warmer air and water resulting from climate change may have contributed to the severity of the storms. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has disputed such claims as an attempt to  politicize  natural disasters.

Summary: निकारागुआ पेरिस जलवायु समझौते में शामिल होगा, अमेरिका, सीरिया को अलग-थलग कर देगा


HAVANA (Reuters) - Saul Berenthal has waited for decades for a chance to do business in Cuba. Despite the astonishing breakthroughs in U.S.-Cuban relations under President Barack Obama, he must wait some more. Berenthal and business partner Horace Clemmons of Alabama are close to becoming the first U.S. businessmen to manufacture in Cuba with a plan to build low-cost tractors designed for Cuban farms, largely run by private cooperatives. Their project has U.S. approval and Cuba’s Communist  government has given positive signals about the proposed plant but has yet to bestow permission. “It’s a little bit of a test of loyalty. Are we willing to go through obstacles to achieve what we believe is a good thing for the Cubans and ourselves?” said Berenthal, who was born in Cuba in 1944 and left for the United States as a student in 1960, a year after Fidel Castro’s revolution. After more than half a century of antagonism between the two countries, Obama has redefined relations with Cuba in the last 15 months, and Cuba is changing. But its leaders are wary of moving too quickly. “What is perceived on the outside as slow progress is really the way of Cubans assuring themselves of the trust that is necessary to be built,” Berenthal said. Obama arrives in Havana on Sunday for a historic visit that seals a rapprochement he and Cuban President Raul Castro agreed in December 2014 after 18 months of secret negotiations. Since then, Havana has changed noticeably. The number of U.S. visitors soared 77 percent in 2015, swarming hotels and restaurants that have been booked to capacity.  Obama this week issued sweeping regulations to promote even more U.S. travel and trade to Cuba. It was the fifth time he has used executive powers to boost ties with Cuba, sidestepping the Republican-controlled Congress which has refused to lift a 54-year-old economic embargo against the island. Cuba’s government has yet to fully reciprocate. Cuba did agree to roaming deals with U.S. telecommunications operators and restoring scheduled commercial airline service, two deals that bring more revenue to the government. When it comes to Obama’s overtures to the Cuba’s small but growing private sector, however, the government has been more deliberate. It has yet to accept U.S. sales of farming equipment and construction materials to private businesses, which were authorized by Obama.  Market-style reforms, introduced by Raul Castro in 2011 to “update” Cuba’s socialist model, have been implemented haltingly, even reversed in some areas. The government recently attempted restoring price controls on fresh food markets in Havana. Many traits of communism remain. Political dissent is  repressed, commercial property cannot be bought and sold and the government still controls imports and exports.  There is no wholesale market for most private enterprises, forcing shopkeepers to buy inventory at state retail prices or resort to trickery or the black market.  “Cuba has already changed, but needs more,” said Niuris Higueras, owner of the Atelier restaurant, one of the trendiest spots in Havana’s dining scene. She said business grew 50 percent over the past year. “We need to link up with the U.S. market,” Higueras said. “There needs to be more access to U.S. products here in Cuba. We need Home Depot, a Walmart, a Costco. A Restaurant Depot would be fabulous.” While the ice has been broken on commerce, Castro insists there will be no change to one-party rule.    U.S.-backed dissidents are still detained for attempting  unauthorized political demonstrations and opponents of Obama’s opening to Cuba say he has rewarded Castro without receiving concessions in return. The White House counters that helping stimulate a vibrant private sector is good for ordinary Cubans and offers a more promising path toward political change than the decades-old policy of isolation. While the date of Dec. 17, 2014, marks the most significant turning point in U.S.-Cuban relations, the Obama policy that has so far had most impact on the lives of ordinary Cubans was implemented in 2009, just three months into his presidency. It was then he ordered the lifting of travel restrictions on Cuban-Americans visiting relatives in Cuba and the removal of limits on remittances to relatives on the island. Cuban-Americans can now come and go freely and send as much money as they want to their families. That has financed a boom in small businesses and home repairs and jolted the nascent real estate market. Castro’s own reforms have also helped grow the private sector. Today some 500,000 Cubans, or 10 percent of the workforce, are registered to work in private businesses, including restaurants, car repair workshops, homes rented out to tourists, beauty parlors and English language schools. Some 70 percent of the 1-million-strong agricultural workforce is private with many Cubans working on state farms that have converted into cooperatives and owning equal stakes in the business.   John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, which has been tracking Cuba for more than 20 years, says the changes have lifted expectations, especially inside the budding middle-class.  “There is now additional pressure from within for structural changes to the ideological foundation of the country. Cuba must do more than reform the commercial and economic sectors of the country. It must aggressively redefine the revolution,” Kavulich said. While Cuban dissidents and Obama’s critics at home prioritize the issue of human rights, others are more concerned about economic growth and better living conditions. “No one is talking about the visit in terms of democracy, human rights or the opposition. There is still no culture around freedom of expression,” Anaida Gonzalez, a retired nurse in central Camaguey province, said in a telephone interview. “People have too many problems in their daily lives. What they want is for their lives to improve and they associate that with the embargo,” she said.    Most Cubans live on state salaries that average $25 a month plus a monthly ration card that provides about a week’s worth of food and household supplies. “It would be a mistake to assume most Cubans prioritize political questions and are scared to express themselves,” said Carlos Alzugaray, a retired Cuban diplomat and professor specializing in U.S.-Cuban relations. “They hope to live better. Change, political and economic, is coming to Cuba anyway, but on our own terms.”

Summary: ओबामा की नीति में बदलाव के बाद से क्यूबा बदल रहा है, लेकिन धीरे-धीरे


(Reuters) - Calling him “the best hope for investors who want a Republican in the White House,” Barron’s announced its support for Ohio Governor John Kasich for president with a front-page editorial in its latest hard-copy edition. Barron’s had previously endorsed Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton as a preferred choice over the current front-runner for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, Donald Trump, but in its editorial the weekly newspaper said that Kasich, “outshines them both.” “Unlike Clinton, Kasich has a sensible across-the-board tax-cutting agenda for corporations, individuals, and investors,” the editorial written by Barron’s executive editor, John Kimelman, said. “And as a Republican president working with a presumably GOP-controlled Congress, he would be a more effective leader.”

Summary: बैरन ने राष्ट्रपति पद के लिए कासिच का समर्थन किया


WASHINGTON/ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) - President Donald Trump forged a surprising deal with Democrats in Congress on Wednesday to extend the U.S. debt limit and provide government funding until Dec. 15, embracing his political adversaries and blindsiding fellow Republicans in a rare bipartisan accord. Trump, living up to his reputation for unpredictability, met at the White House with congressional leaders from both parties and overruled Republicans and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who wanted a longer-term debt-limit extension rather than the three-month Democratic proposal the president embraced. “We could have done a one-year deal today,” Mnuchin told reporters aboard Air Force One later in the day en route back to Washington from an event in North Dakota where Trump spoke about taxes. Mnuchin said Trump chose a short-term deal to keep his options open on possibly raising military funding later this year, suggesting a longer-term government funding deal might have blocked that. Trump is very focused on military spending, “particularly with what’s going on in North Korea and other parts of the world today,” Mnuchin said. “The president wasn’t willing to give up his need for additional military spending.” If passed by the Republican-led Congress, the three-month agreement would avert an unprecedented default on U.S. government debt, keep the government funded at the outset of the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 and provide aid to victims of Hurricane Harvey. “It was a really good moment of some bipartisanship and getting things done,” top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said. Less than an hour before the meeting, Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan had called the Democratic proposal that Trump later embraced a “ridiculous and disgraceful” idea that would “play politics with the debt ceiling.” Even with the three-month extension of the debt limit, a Senate Republican aide told reporters that nothing in the tentative deal would stop the Treasury Department from using its powers to extend the deadline, depending on revenue flow. In the past, the debt limit deadline has been extended for several months under those powers. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, overridden by Trump during the meeting, said he would bring the deal to the Senate floor for a vote. “The president can speak for himself, but his feeling was that we needed to come together, to not create a picture of divisiveness at a time of genuine national crisis,” McConnell told reporters. The agreement was an uncommon instance of bipartisan compromise since Trump took office in January. Washington has suffered through bitter partisanship that has at times left the U.S. capital dysfunctional under Trump and his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama. Trump had tangled repeatedly with Schumer and top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi. “We had a very good meeting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer,” Trump, a wealthy businessman who as a candidate touted his deal-making skills, told reporters aboard Air Force One, without mentioning McConnell or Ryan, with whom he has had fraught relations. “We agreed to a three-month extension on debt ceiling, which they consider to be sacred, very important. Always we’ll agree on debt ceiling, automatically because of the importance of it,” Trump said. Conservative groups were aghast, accusing Trump of caving in to the Democrats rather than insisting on spending cuts to accompany the debt ceiling increase, and some hard-line Republicans expressed opposition to it. Republican leaders and Mnuchin pushed in the meeting for an 18-month debt limit hike, then floated six months, but Pelosi and Schumer held firm to their three-month proposal and Trump sided with them, according to people familiar with the meeting. The party in power, in this case Republicans, often argues for the longest debt limit increase as possible for two reasons. First, it protects members of Congress from casting multiple votes on the politically unpopular legislation over a short period of time, especially in the run-up to the 2018 congressional elections. Second, it helps stabilize markets.  For minority Democrats, whose votes are needed to pass debt ceiling increases, they could potentially use the debt limit vote later in the year as leverage to win concessions on a tax overhaul package that Trump badly wants to advance. Even though Republicans control the White House and both chambers of Congress, Trump has yet to win passage of any major legislation, with Democrats typically united against him. The House on Wednesday approved roughly $8 billion in initial emergency aid for relief and rebuilding after Hurricane Harvey, which tore into Texas on Aug. 25, with the measure now going to the Senate.    “Our No. 1 priority was getting funding for Harvey,” Mnuchin said. “To get the funding for Harvey, we needed to extend the debt limit.” U.S. shares rose and the dollar gained against the safe-haven Japanese yen as word of the deal helped mitigate investor concerns about North Korea and a major hurricane barreling toward Florida. The news also lifted the yield on benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury notes US10YT=RR after it had fallen to a near 10-month low at 2.054 percent. The Treasury Department has said the ceiling must be raised in the next few weeks. If not, the government would be unable to borrow more money or pay its bills, including its debt payments. That could hurt the U.S. credit rating, cause financial turmoil, harm the economy and possibly trigger a recession. Representative Kevin Cramer, a Republican from North Dakota, was aboard Air Force One when he heard about the short-term deal. He told reporters on the plane: “I will tell you that I gasped when I heard it.” He said the deal would be a “tough sell” for House Republicans but that some would “warm up to the idea” when they learned more about it.

Summary: ट्रम्प ने दुर्लभ द्विदलीय सौदे में ऋण सीमा पर डेमोक्रेट का पक्ष लिया


DUBAI (Reuters) - Kuwait replaced its oil, finance and defense ministers in a cabinet reshuffle on Monday, state news agency KUNA reported. Bakhit al-Rashidi was appointed the new oil minister of the OPEC member state and Nayef Falah al-Hajraf was named the new finance minister, KUNA said, citing a royal decree. Sheikh Nasser Sabah Al-Ahmad, son of the ruling Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, was appointed the new minister of defense. The previous cabinet resigned on Oct. 30 when its information minister was questioned by parliament and faced a no-confidence vote over alleged violations of budgetary and legislative rules. Mohammed Nasser Al-Jabri was named the new minister. The major oil producer has the oldest legislature among the Gulf Arab states and experiences frequent cabinet reshuffles. The previous government was formed in February. Rashidi, who replaced Essam al-Marzouq as oil minister, is chief executive of Kuwait Petroleum International (KPI), the international downstream subsidiary of state-run Kuwait Petroleum Corp. There was no immediate announcement about his KPI post but in the past, Kuwaiti ministers have resigned positions as corporate executives when they take government posts. Rashidi, who has an engineering background, is also a former executive of state refiner Kuwait National Petroleum Co. Hajraf replaced Anas al-Saleh, who had been finance minister since early 2014. Hajraf was previously chairman of the Board of Commissioners of the Capital Markets Authority, the securities regulator. He has also served as an acting finance minister.  Saleh was named deputy prime minister and state minister for cabinet affairs.

Summary: मंत्रिमंडल फेरबदल में कुवैत ने तेल और वित्त मंत्रियों की जगह ली


TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libyan authorities are attempting to negotiate with a group that has cut water supplies to the Libyan capital for the second time in two months to press for the release of a jailed ally, an official said on Tuesday. The group shut down pipes pumping water to Tripoli and other coastal towns at the al-Hasawna well system south of the capital, said Tawfiq Shwehaidi, a manager at the Great Man Made River in the eastern city of Benghazi.  Today is the fifth day in a row that the water has stopped and we are trying to negotiate with them,  he said.  The group, loyal to late former leader Muammar Gaddafi, is demanding the release of Mabrouk Ehnaish, a militia leader detained last month by Tripoli s Special Deterrence Force (SDF), which is aligned with Libya s U.N.-backed government. Ehnaish s backers have made various threats to sabotage infrastructure including oil and gas supplies, and in October blocked water supplies to the capital for about two weeks.  The Great Man Made River is a pipeline system built under Gaddafi that pumps water to coastal areas from underneath the country s southern desert. The water cuts come as Libyans struggle to cope with a steep decline in living standards during the conflict that developed after Gaddafi s 2011 overthrow, and an economic crisis that has led to rapid inflation and severe cash shortages. In recent days there have also been long queues for fuel and cooking gas in Tripoli. Though distributors have denied any shortages, some residents nervous about disruption to supplies have queued for more than an hour to fill vehicles or jerry cans.

Summary: लीबिया ने राजधानी में पानी की आपूर्ति बहाल करने के लिए समूह पर दबाव डाला


SITTWE, Myanmar (Reuters) - The thousands of Rohingya Muslims thronging the desolate beach had no food or water, except what the Red Cross gives them, and there was no shelter from the tropical sun and rain, yet fear of  tomorrow  has persuaded them to abandon their homes. Fabrizio Carboni, the top International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) official in Myanmar, described the plight of some 5,OOO people who had made their way to the mouth of the Naf river that divides Buddhist Myanmar from Muslim Bangladesh. He said some had been there as long as a month, unable to afford to pay fishermen to take them to Bangladesh, where most of their fellow Rohingyas have fled to escape the ethnic violence that erupted in Myanmar s Rakhine state two months ago.   What I can just tell them is a beach is not a place where you live,  Carboni told Reuters on Thursday, a day after visiting this stretch on the frontline of an unfolding humanitarian crisis. Myanmar has blocked humanitarian agencies apart from Red Cross organisations from accessing the northern part of Rakhine state, where the conflict worsened after Rohingya militants attacked 30 security posts on Aug. 25.  Many of the 600,000 stateless Rohingya Muslims who have fled Myanmar say they were driven out by a brutal military counteroffensive. The United Nations has called it a campaign of  ethnic cleansing , and Myanmar soldiers have been accused of rape, killings and arson. Myanmar s de facto leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, has said the refugees can return, but thousands have continued to arrive in Bangladesh.  When you decide to leave everything and go it s because, rightly or not, you believe that tomorrow will be worse than today where you are staying,  Carboni told Reuters in Sittwe, the capital of Myanmar s Rakhine state.  The stranded people weighed up their access to basic services, intercommunal relations and security before deciding to flee, he said.  Probably it s a lack of trust for the future where they are. I don t think we are in a moment now where there s a specific event triggering movement. We are in another phase,  he added. The Red Cross, which has about 200 personnel working in northern Rakhine, provided plastic sheets, food and water to the people on the beach.  Prior to the attacks on security posts in August, several groups had hundreds of staff and volunteers working in the area, but the government has restricted the movement of aid workers after accusing some groups of aiding Rohingya militants. Ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, who accuse aid groups of favoring Muslims, on Wednesday blocked Relief International staff from visiting a camp for Muslims displaced in earlier violence. Protesters threw petrol bombs to try to block a Red Cross aid shipment in an incident on Sept. 20. Carboni said the Red Cross organisations could not be the only ones working in northern Rakhine  for the long run , but said their ability to reach people was ramping up. Food had reached 40,000 people by Monday, and at least 5,000 households would get food in the next week, he said.  In our dialogue with the government, we were always very clear, saying we will do our best and more to reach as many people as possible,  said Carboni.   Now there is a need for the government to re-engage with the rest of the humanitarian community, and find an acceptable way for the people to receive the assistance they need.

Summary: डर से रोहिंग्या म्यांमार से भागते रहते हैंः रेड क्रॉस अधिकारी


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. intelligence community will soon disclose an estimate of the number of Americans whose electronic communications have been caught in the crosshairs of online surveillance programs intended for foreigners, U.S. lawmakers said in a letter seen by Reuters on Friday. The estimate, requested by members of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, is expected to be made public as early as next month, the letter said. Its disclosure would come as Congress is expected to begin debate in the coming months over whether to reauthorize or reform the so-called surveillance authority, known as Section 702, a provision that was added to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 2008. “The timely production of this information is incredibly important to informed debate on Section 702 in the next Congress— and, without it, even those of us inclined to support reauthorization would have reason for concern,” said the letter signed by 11 lawmakers, all members of the House Judiciary Committee. The letter was sent on Friday to National Intelligence Director James Clapper. It said his office and National Security Agency (NSA) officials had already briefed congressional staff about how the intelligence community intends to comply with the disclosure request. Clapper’s office confirmed the letter had been received but declined further comment. The lawmakers termed their letter an effort to “memorialize our understanding” of the intelligence community’s plan to provide an estimate in real numbers, not percentages, as soon as January that can be shared with the public. The government has long held that calculating the number of Americans subject to Section 702 surveillance might be technically impossible and would require privacy intrusions exceeding those raised by the actual surveillance programs, which were originally intended to counter foreign espionage. Intelligence officials have said that online data about Americans is “incidentally” collected under Section 702, due to a range of technical and practical reasons. Critics have assailed such collection as back-door surveillance of Americans without a warrant. Section 702 will expire on Dec. 31, 2017, absent congressional action. It enables two internet surveillance programs called Prism and Upstream that were revealed in a series of leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden more than three years ago. Prism gathers messaging data from Alphabet Inc’s Google, Facebook , Microsoft, Apple  and other major tech companies that is sent to and from a foreign target under surveillance. Upstream allows the NSA to copy web traffic flowing along the internet backbone located inside the United States and search that data for certain terms associated with a target. Clapper, who is stepping down next month, suggested in April that providing an estimate of Americans surveilled under Section 702, a figure some have said could tally in the millions, might be possible, while defending the law as “a prolific producer of critical intelligence.” Republicans James Sensenbrenner, Darrell Issa, Ted Poe and Jason Chaffetz signed the letter, in addition to Democrats John Conyers, Jerrold Nadler, Zoe Lofgren, Hank Johnson, Ted Deutch, Suzan DelBene and David Cicilline.

Summary: निगरानी में अमेरिकियों की संख्या के अनुमान का खुलासा करेगा अमेरिका


WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, appearing fully recovered from dehydration suffered while helping to build a home for charity in Canada, was released from an overnight hospital stay on Friday and addressed the project’s closing ceremony. Carter, 92, collapsed while working on Thursday at the Winnipeg construction site for Habitat for Humanity, which promotes affordable home ownership, and was taken to St. Boniface General Hospital for medical treatment and tests. By Friday morning, Carter was smiling as he returned to the building site to help kick off the project’s last day. Hours later, he and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, 89, attended closing ceremonies at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Manitoba’s capital, receiving a rousing ovation from the crowd. Dressed in blue jeans, a T-shirt and light-weight jacket, a relaxed, fit-looking Carter climbed a short flight of steps to the stage to salute Habitat’s members for their contributions. “I look upon all the volunteers, in a very sincere way, as human rights heroes, and I thank you for it,” he said, and joked that his “bringing attention to this Habitat project was completely unintentional.” The former first lady told the crowd her husband received a clean bill of health after an extensive battery of tests during his brief hospitalization, including from one test designed to detect heart damage. The results showed “there has never been any kind of damage at all to Jimmy Carter’s heart,” she said. “I knew he had a good heart.” Thursday’s health scare generated an outpouring of support for Carter, a Democrat who served in the White House from January 1977 to January 1981 and has lived longer after his term in office than any other president in U.S. history. A high point of his presidency was Carter’s role in brokering the 1978 Camp David Accords that ushered in peace between Israel and Egypt.  But having left office profoundly unpopular, he is widely regarded as a better former president than he was a president, and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his humanitarian work. Carter disclosed in August 2015 that he had been diagnosed with a form of skin cancer called melanoma that had spread to his brain and elsewhere and had been spotted during liver surgery. But months later, Carter told the Maranatha Baptist Church, where he teaches Sunday school in his home town of Plains, Georgia, that his latest brain scan showed no sign of the disease. Carter was in Canada for a project to build 150 new homes for needy families, celebrating the country’s 150th independence anniversary.

Summary: जिमी कार्टर कनाडा में निर्जलीकरण के डर से ठीक हुए


GENEVA (Reuters) - British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn said on Friday he wanted to see much more information about the Brexit divorce deal struck between Prime Minister Theresa May s government and the European Commission. May sealed the deal after a pre-dawn dash to Brussels, thereby clearing the way for the start of arduous talks on future trade ties between Britain and the EU after Brexit. Asked if he thought the deal with the EU was a breakthrough, Corbyn told reporters:  Until I see more of it, no.   Speaking in Geneva after a visit to the United Nations, Corbyn said his party stood ready for another parliamentary election in Britain at any time, noting May s reliance for her majority on Northern Ireland s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).  They (the DUP) seem to be calling the shots all the time. They scuppered a deal she was trying to make a few days ago and they clearly put conditions on this, which is why I want to see a much fuller statement than we ve had thus far,  he said. The next election in Britain is not due until 2022, but there has been much media speculation that it could come much earlier due to May s lack of a parliamentary majority and deep divisions within her governing Conservative Party over Brexit. Corbyn said Labour had consistently called for maintaining the benefits of belonging to the EU s customs union and single market during a transitional period as Britain leaves the bloc.  The transitional period is unspecific and I think she needs to bring some clarity to that,  he said. The transition should be long enough to guarantee UK and EU jobs and to deal with common problems, such as regulating airspace, he said. It should also ensure that consumers , workers  and environmental rights were put into British law.   The statements that have been made this morning do not specify what regulatory framework there will be in the future and that remains to be seen, because there are still many people in the Conservative Party who want to live in a de-regulated environment, where Britain basically lowers wages and conditions and the tax take on large corporations.      Corbyn said he hoped Friday s deal included sections on the rights of family reunion for EU and British citizens, adding they should be granted unilaterally and not negotiated. A reference in the deal to involving the European Court of Justice on citizenship issues for up to eight years was a sign that the government accepted the need for judicial oversight of citizens  rights, he said.

Summary: ब्रिटेन के कॉर्बिन यूरोपीय संघ के तलाक समझौते पर अधिक जानकारी चाहते हैं


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will convene a meeting on Tuesday with the Republican and Democratic leaders of the U.S. Senate and its Judiciary Committee to discuss a Supreme Court nominee, the White House said on Thursday. The White House has contacted every member of the judiciary panel, both Republicans and Democrats, to discuss efforts to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said at a news briefing.

Summary: सुप्रीम कोर्ट के मुद्दे पर ओबामा अगले सप्ताह सीनेट के नेताओं से मिलेंगेः व्हाइट हाउस


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday unanimously approved the nomination of Christopher Wray to be FBI director following the dismissal of the agency’s former chief, James Comey, by President Donald Trump. All 20 members of the committee voted to approve Wray, a white-collar crime lawyer and former assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush, sending his nomination to the full Senate for a vote.  Trump nominated Wray last month after firing Comey during an FBI investigation into whether Trump campaign associates colluded with the Russians to help him with the 2016 presidential election.

Summary: सीनेट पैनल ने एफ. बी. आई. निदेशक के रूप में रे के नामांकन को मंजूरी दी


(Reuters) - London s Angel underground station is closed while authorities respond to a security alert outside the station, Transport For London said in a tweet on Wednesday.

Summary: सुरक्षा अलर्ट के कारण लंदन का एंजेल भूमिगत स्टेशन बंद


DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar  is doing everything he can  to avoid a snap general election, his spokesman said, but the crisis that has brought his minority government to the brink showed no obvious sign of resolution on Sunday.     Varadkar has two days to end the standoff with the party propping up his government before it submits a motion of no confidence in his deputy prime minister, a move that Varadkar says will force him to call a snap election before Christmas.  The crisis has erupted less than three weeks before a summit on Britain s plans to leave the European Union, where Ireland will play a major role in deciding whether the negotiations can move onto the next phase. Talks between Varadkar and Micheal Martin, the leader of the main opposition party, Fianna Fail, will continue on Sunday ahead of Martin bringing the motion of no confidence in Deputy Prime Minister Frances Fitzgerald before parliament on Tuesday.  The Taoiseach (prime minister) is doing everything he can to avoid an election, and hopes it will be possible to reach agreement with Micheal Martin,  Varadkar s spokesman said in a statement on Sunday. The spokesman added that there was no question of Fitzgerald being asked to resign over her handling of a legal case involving a police whistleblower. Fianna Fail say this is the only way to avoid an election. The Sunday Times newspaper reported that the leaders agreed the outline of a deal that would allow an ongoing judge-led tribunal to investigate the issue but that sources in Varadkar s Fine Gael party said an election was unavoidable if Fianna Fail continued to call for Fitzgerald to step down. Varadkar is due to play a major role in the Dec. 14-15 EU summit on Brexit, telling fellow leaders whether Dublin believes sufficient progress has been made on the future border between EU-member Ireland and Britain s province of Northern Ireland. The government has said enough progress has not been made to date and Ireland s EU Commissioner Phil Hogan said on Sunday that Dublin would  continue to play tough  over its threat to veto talks. The border is one of three issues Brussels wants broadly resolved before it decides whether to move the talks on to a second phase about trade and EU officials have said a snap election in Ireland would complicate that task. Bosses at a number of Ireland s top companies were quoted by the Sunday Business Post as telling the parties to step back from the brink.  This thing of bringing the country to a standstill at a critical time is just unacceptable,  Dalata Hotel Group (DHG.I) chief executive Pat McCann told the newspaper. Politicians say they also know there is no appetite among voters for an election just 18 months after the last one and an opinion poll on Saturday suggested there would be little change with another minority administration the most likely outcome.

Summary: आयरलैंड के प्रधानमंत्री चुनाव से बचने के लिए हर संभव प्रयास कर रहे हैंः प्रवक्ता


YANGON (Reuters) - Rohingya Muslim villagers cut off from food and threatened by Buddhist neighbors in Myanmar s violence-racked Rakhine state received their first substantial food supplies in months on Wednesday after international pressure on the government to help. Diplomats and aid groups called on the government to step in after Reuters exclusively reported the dire situation faced by thousands of Rohingya Muslims trapped in the villages of Ah Nauk Pyin and Nyaung Pin Gyi last month.  A boat arrived yesterday evening with rice bags and six Red Cross staff came to our village this morning,  Maung Maung, an administrator in the riverside Rohingya village of Ah Nauk Pyin, told Reuters by telephone. He said it was the first time in three months that significant supplies of food had been delivered to the village.  The aid arrived just as we re starving,  he said. Fragile relations between the Rohingya villagers and their ethnic Rakhine Buddhist neighbors were shattered on Aug. 25, when deadly attacks by Rohingya militants prompted a ferocious response from Myanmar s security forces. Rights groups say ethnic Rakhine Buddhists have joined in attacks on Rohingya, and the residents of Ah Nauk Pyin told Reuters in mid-September they had been threatened by Buddhists and they had pleaded with authorities for safe passage out. The state government told them to stay put. More than half a million Rohingya villagers have fled to Bangladesh to escape what the United Nations has called a  textbook example of ethnic cleansing  aimed at pushing the Rohingya out of the country for good. Myanmar dismisses that. It says it is fighting a legitimate campaign against Rohingya  terrorists . Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya remain in Rakhine, many in fear of their security and facing growing hunger as food supplies dwindle, partly because of restrictions on the trade and movement of rice. Minister for Relief and Resettlement Win Myat Aye, who is leading the government response to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Rakhine, confirmed that the aid had arrived in Ah Nauk Pyin. He said the government would support all vulnerable people.  We ll support these people continuously, until they can stand on their own feet,  he said.  Nobody wants to rely on aid all their lives.  After Reuters reported on the plight of Ah Nauk Pyin, and the nearby village of Nyaung Pin Gyi, Myanmar-based diplomats had asked to visit on a government-organized trip to Rakhine state last week.  The itinerary of the trip mentioned the Reuters report. Win Myat Aye has been to Ah Nauk Pyin several times with Rakhine state government officials, and has promised to protect the residents. Myanmar has restricted access to Rakhine for most aid agencies, despite growing international calls for humanitarian groups to be allowed in to help. Aid is being organized by three Red Cross organizations - the Myanmar Red Cross, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The aid to the 600 families of Ah Nauk Pyin delivered on Wednesday included rice, oil, beans, salt, sugar and tinned fish for a month. Residents of the other Rohingya village, Nyaung Pin Gyi, said they had not been visited and had yet to get any aid but ICRC communications official Khin Htay Oo said Nyaung Pin Gyi would get food aid on Tuesday.  We help all people affected by the conflict, we do not take sides based on race or religion,  she said.

Summary: म्यांमार में फंसे रोहिंग्या मुसलमानों को महीनों में पहली बार पर्याप्त खाद्य सहायता मिली


ROME (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that a U.S. threat to destroy North Korea in the event of a war was  a bloodthirsty tirade  and military action against Pyongyang would be a big mistake.  Speaking on a visit to Italy, Lavrov strongly condemned comments made by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who earlier this week warned North Korea s leadership it would be  utterly destroyed  if war were to break out after Pyongyang test fired its most advanced missile.  If someone really wants to use force to, as the U.S. representative to the United Nations put it, destroy North Korea ...then I think that is playing with fire and a big mistake,  Lavrov told reporters. He called Haley s speech on North Korea, which she made at an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting,  a really bloodthirsty tirade .  We will do everything to ensure that (the use of force) doesn t happen so that the problem is decided only using peaceful and political-diplomatic means,  said Lavrov. Later, addressing a Rome conference, Lavrov said Russia and the United States both wanted North Korea to disarm, but said Washington would send a bad message if it walked away from a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. U.S. President Donald Trump said in October he would not certify that Tehran was complying with the 2015 deal and warned he might ultimately terminate it, accusing Iran of  not living up to the spirit  of the accord.  If the United States drops out of this deal, it won t be very credible in the eyes of those who are now requested to drop their (own) nuclear program like North Korea,  Lavrov said. He added that most  serious analysts ... and many officials  in Washington understood this.

Summary: रूस ने उत्तर कोरिया को नष्ट करने की अमेरिकी धमकी को 'रक्तपिपासु निंदा' बताया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic members of the U.S. Congress called on Monday for the creation of an independent commission to investigate Russia’s attempts to intervene in the 2016 election, similar to the Sept. 11 panel that probed the 2001 attacks on the United States. Their “Protecting our Democracy Act” would create a 12-member, bipartisan independent panel to interview witnesses, obtain documents, issue subpoenas and receive public testimony to examine attempts by Moscow and any other entities to influence the election. The panel members would not be members of Congress. The legislation is one of many calls by lawmakers to look into Russian involvement in the contest, in which Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in the White House race, confounding opinion polls. Republicans also kept control of the Senate and House of Representatives by larger-than-expected margins. U.S. intelligence agencies on Friday released a report saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an effort to help Trump’s electoral chances by discrediting Clinton. Russia has denied the hacking allegations. A Kremlin spokesman said Monday they were “reminiscent of a witch-hunt.” “There is no question that Russia attacked us,” Senator Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told a news conference.        Versions of the bill were introduced in both the Senate and House. In the Senate it has 10 sponsors. In the House it is backed by every member of the Democratic caucus, said Representative Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. However, no Republicans currently back the bill, so its prospects are dim, given Republican control of both houses of Congress. While a few Republicans, notably Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain, have supported calls for an independent probe, party leaders have resisted the idea, saying that investigations by Republican-led congressional committees are sufficient. Senator Amy Klobuchar, who just returned from a trip to the Baltic states, Ukraine and Georgia with Graham and McCain, said Russia’s actions justified a probe by an independent panel of national experts. “This is not just about one political party. It’s not even about one election. It’s not even about one country, our country. It is a repeated attempt... around the world, to influence elections,” Klobuchar said. After Sept 11, 2001, Congress established an independent commission to look into the attacks and make recommendations about how to prevent similar actions in the future. Many of the recommendations were adopted into law. “The American people felt good about what they did,” Cummings said.

Summary: डेमोक्रेट्स रूस की जांच के लिए 9/11-शैली का विशेष आयोग चाहते हैं


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would declare next week a national emergency on opioid abuse, a move that could give states access to federal funds to fight the drug crisis. The United States is battling a surge in opioid-related deaths, including 33,000 lives lost in 2015, more than any year on record, according to federal data.  “The opioid is a tremendous emergency,” Trump told Fox Business Network. “Next week, I’m going to (be) declaring an emergency, (a) national emergency on drugs.” Trump is expected to provide a preview of his plans for tackling drug demand and the opioid crisis in remarks on Thursday. Trump said in August that he would declare opioid abuse a national emergency.  Opioids, primarily prescription painkillers, heroin and fentanyl - a drug 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine - are fueling the drug overdoses.  The declaration by Trump could help unlock more support and resources to address the drug overdose epidemic, such as additional funding and expanded access to various forms of treatment, and it gives the government more flexibility in waiving rules and restrictions to expedite action.

Summary: ट्रम्प ओपिओइड पर अगले सप्ताह आपातकाल की घोषणा जारी करेंगे


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump, striking a defiant tone on Thursday after days of political tumult, denied asking former FBI Director James Comey to drop a probe into his former national security adviser and decried a “witch hunt” against him.  Trump’s terse denial followed reports by Reuters and other media about a memo written by Comey alleging that Trump made the request to close down the investigation into Michael Flynn and Russia in February. Trump fired Comey on May 9. “No. No. Next question,” Trump told a news conference in the White House, when asked if he “in any way, shape or form” ever urged Comey to end the probe. Comey’s dismissal last week set off a series of jarring developments that culminated on Wednesday in the Justice Department’s appointment of a special counsel to probe possible ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. They included media reports that Trump discussed sensitive intelligence on the Islamic State militant group with Russia’s foreign minister.     In a pair of morning Twitter posts and at a later news conference, the Republican president described calls by some on the left for his impeachment as “ridiculous” and said he had done nothing to warrant criminal charges. “The entire thing has been a witch hunt and there is no collusion between certainly myself and my campaign - but I can always speak for myself - and the Russians. Zero,” he told the news conference, standing alongside Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. In his earlier Twitter posts, Trump criticized the naming of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a special counsel by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, an official he himself appointed. “With all of the illegal acts that took place in the Clinton campaign & Obama Administration, there was never a special counsel appointed!” Trump wrote on Thursday morning.  He did not offer any evidence of such acts in his reference to former Democratic President Barack Obama and former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. “This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!” Trump tweeted. Democrats rejected Trump’s characterization. “This is a truth hunt,” said Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar. Russia has denied U.S. intelligence agencies’ conclusion that it interfered in the election campaign to try to tilt the vote in Trump’s favor. Trump has long bristled at the notion that Russia played any role in his November election victory over Clinton. Trump fired Flynn on Feb. 14 for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the extent of his conversations last year with Russia’s ambassador.  Reuters reported on Thursday that Flynn and other Trump campaign advisers were in contact with Russian officials and others with Kremlin ties in at least 18 calls and emails during the last seven months of the presidential race. U.S. stocks recovered ground on Thursday as upbeat economic data emboldened investors to return to the market, a day after Wall Street saw the biggest selloff in eight months on worries the political turmoil could undermine Trump initiatives such as tax cuts that investors see as favoring economic growth. Rosenstein, the No. 2 Justice Department official, named Mueller amid mounting pressure in Congress for an independent investigation beyond existing FBI and congressional probes into the Russia issue. Trump later told news anchors at the White House that Mueller’s appointment was a “very, very negative thing,” adding: “I believe it hurts our country terribly, because it shows we’re a divided, mixed-up, not-unified country.” Rosenstein briefed senators on Thursday but made no public comments. One of the attendees, speaking on condition of anonymity, described Rosenstein as anxious and nervous and said he drank multiple glasses of water “and spilled one.” Afterward, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told reporters that “everything he said was that you need to treat this investigation as if it may be a criminal investigation.” A self-described friend of Comey’s wrote in a public blog post on Thursday that Comey had told him that he had rebuffed a Trump request for loyalty by promising only honesty. “He also told me that Trump was perceptibly uncomfortable with this answer,” wrote Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a critic of Trump.  “And he said that ever since, the President had been trying to be chummy in a fashion that Comey felt was designed to absorb him into Trump’s world - to make him part of the team.” Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill said Rosenstein told senators that he knew Comey would be fired before he wrote his letter accusing him of missteps as FBI director, including his handling of an election-year probe into Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. The White House initially said last week that Trump was prompted to fire Comey after reading the Rosenstein letter. Trump later said he had already decided to dismiss him and was thinking of “this Russia thing.” The New York Times reported on Thursday that Trump called Comey weeks after he took office on Jan. 20 and asked him when federal authorities were going to say Trump was not under investigation. It cited two people briefed on the call.   Comey told Trump he should not contact him directly about FBI investigations but follow procedure and have the White House counsel ask the Justice Department, which oversees the FBI, the Times reported. A key issue Mueller may have to tackle is whether Trump has committed obstruction of justice, an offense that could be used in any effort in the Republican-led Congress to impeach him and remove him from office.  Asked about possible obstruction of justice, Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters the special counsel would “follow the facts where ever they may lead” and that “it is premature to prejudge anything at this point.”

Summary: ट्रम्प ने कोमी से जांच बंद करने के लिए कहने से इनकार किया, 'जादू-टोना शिकार' की निंदा की


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday it was urging Saudi Arabia to be  fair and transparent  in its handling of any prosecutions stemming from a sweeping corruption probe that has resulted in the arrests of dozens of top Saudi officials. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the United States had no advance knowledge of the corruption crackdown that unfolded over the weekend and resulted in the detention of members of the royal family, ministers and investors, including prominent billionaire businessman Alwaleed bin Talal.  We continue to encourage Saudi authorities to pursue the prosecution of people they believe to have been corrupt officials; we expect them to do it in a fair and transparent manner,  Nauert told a briefing.  We call on the government of Saudi Arabia to do that.  Nauert said the United States had received assurances from the Saudi government that it would do so, but another U.S. official later told reporters that she had misspoken and that they had no such assurances that they could discuss in public. Asked about Saudi Arabia s increasingly tough talk toward Iran and Lebanon, Nauert pointed to what she said was Iran s destabilizing activity and the Lebanese Hezbollah group s past record of attacks against U.S. military personnel. Saudi Arabia accused Lebanon on Monday of declaring war against it because of aggression by Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shi ite group backed by Iran. Saad al-Hariri, the Saudi-allied Lebanese prime minister, resigned on Saturday, blaming Iran and Hezbollah in his resignation speech. Nauert told reporters that Lebanon was a strong U.S. partner. Hezbollah has influential ties across Lebanon. Hariri s coalition government, which took office last year, grouped nearly all Lebanon s main parties, including Hezbollah. Michel Aoun, a Hezbollah ally, is president.  The United States strongly supports the legitimate institutions in the Lebanese state,  Nauert said.  We expect all members of the international community to respect fully those institutions and the sovereignty and political independence of Lebanon.

Summary: अमेरिका ने सउदी से भ्रष्टाचार के मुकदमों से निपटने में निष्पक्ष और खुले होने का आग्रह किया


(Reuters) - Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker signed two bills into law on Thursday that block federal funding from Planned Parenthood and could cost the local organization millions of dollars.   Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin could lose about $7.5 million a year because of the measures, an organization spokeswoman said.  Texas, Louisiana other Republican-controlled states tried to halt funding for the reproductive health organization after an anti-abortion group released videos last summer purported to show Planned Parenthood officials trying to negotiate prices for aborted fetal tissue. Under federal law, donated human fetal tissue may be used for research, but profiting from its sale is prohibited. A grand jury in Texas cleared Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing and indicted two anti-abortion activists behind the filming of the videos for tampering with a government record and violating a prohibition on the purchase and sale of human organs.     One of the new Wisconsin rules requires the state to apply for federal “Title X” family planning grant money and to give those monies to “less controversial public entities” such as state, county and local health departments and clinics, a statement from Walker’s office said.  Planned Parenthood is currently the only entity in Wisconsin receiving this federal money and the funds will not be sent to the organization, the statement said.  State entities providing abortions will now bill Medicaid only for acquisition costs and dispensing fees for prescription drugs.  Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin could lose roughly $4 million a year as a result of this measure, depending on patient volume and the type of birth control patients choose, organization spokeswoman Iris Riis said. The legislation singles out Planned Parenthood and is an attempt to stop the organization from providing essential healthcare, the group said.  “The move was the latest in a long line of attacks by the Governor and the Republican controlled state Legislature on the health of Wisconsin women and families,” the organization said in a statement.   Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin has 22 health centers in the state, three of which offer abortion services, according to its website. Earlier this month, Ohio legislators approved a bill blocking state and federal funds for groups that perform or promote abortions, which cut $1.3 million annually used by Planned Parenthood clinics for HIV testing, pre-natal care and other programs. States including Alabama, Utah and Arkansas have fought losing court battles over their plans to cut funding for local Planned Parenthood operations.

Summary: विस्कॉन्सिन संघीय कोष को नियोजित पितृत्व तक पहुँचने से रोकता है


SAN JUAN (Reuters) - Many people living near a crumbling dam in storm-battered Puerto Rico have evacuated, Governor Ricardo Rossello said on Monday, as he asked for more government aid to avert a humanitarian crisis after Hurricane Maria. Much of the Caribbean island, a U.S. territory with a population of 3.4 million, is still without electricity five days after Maria struck with ferocious winds and torrential rains, the most powerful hurricane to hit Puerto Rico in nearly a century. There have been growing concerns for some 70,000 people who live in the river valley below the Guajataca Dam in the island s northwest, where cracks were seen on Friday in the 88-year-old earthen structure. Rossello said he was working on the assumption that the 120-foot (35-meter) dam would collapse.   I d rather be wrong on that front than doing nothing and having that fail and costing people lives,  he said in an interview with CNN.  Most of the people in the near vicinity have evacuated.  It was unclear if the governor was saying that most of the 70,000 valley inhabitants had left the area, or only the several hundred people living in the small towns closest to the dam. About 320 people from those towns have moved to safety, according to local media. The fear of a potentially catastrophic dam break added to the immense task facing disaster relief authorities after Maria, which was the second major hurricane to strike the Caribbean this month. The storm killed at least 29 people in the region, at least 10 of those in Puerto Rico, which was already battling an economic crisis.  Rossello said that before the storms struck, he had been embarking on an aggressive fiscal agenda that included more than $1.5 billion in cuts.  This is a game changer,  he told CNN.  This is a completely different set of circumstances. This needs to be taken into consideration otherwise there will be a humanitarian crisis.  Brock Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and Tom Bossert, senior adviser to the Department of Homeland Security, met with Rossello on Monday. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters in Washington that the administration was engaged in a fact-finding process to figure out how much help Puerto Rico needs.  The federal response has been anything but slow,  Sanders said at the daily briefing.  In fact, there s been an unprecedented push through of billions of dollars in federal assistance that the administration has fought for.  Many structures on Puerto Rico, including hospitals, remain badly damaged and flooded, with clean drinking water hard to find in some areas. Few planes have been able to land or take off from damaged airports. The storm has also put a big strain on PREPA, the island s electricity utility, which declared bankruptcy in July after accumulating a $9 billion debt and years of underinvestment. From preliminary FEMA reports, it is estimated that 55 percent of transmission towers may be down, and that more than 90 percent of the distribution system could have been destroyed. More than 91 percent of Puerto Rico s cellphone sites are also out of service, the Federal Communications Commission said. There are more than 10,000 federal staff, including more than 700 people from FEMA, doing recovery work in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to FEMA. The National Weather Service warned of further flash floods in the west of the island on Monday as thunderstorms moved in. Maria would likely be downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm on Tuesday night, the National Hurricane Center said. As of 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) on Monday, the center said, it was about 300 miles (480 km) south-southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, heading slowly north.  The storm was unlikely to hit the continental United States directly, but the NHC said large swells were affecting the U.S. East Coast. A tropical storm warning was in effect for much of the North Carolina coast and officials issued a mandatory evacuation order for visitors to Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks that went into effect at 5 a.m. EDT (0900 GMT) on Monday.

Summary: प्यूर्टो रिको ने गिरते बांध के पास के क्षेत्र को खाली कराया, सहायता मांगी


WEST PALM BEACH, Fla./WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Donald Trump on Friday chose Washington insider Donald McGahn to be his White House counsel, giving him the job of untangling potential conflicts of interest that the New York businessman’s presidency may present. McGahn, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, had been the chief counsel of the Trump campaign and was one of the few members of the Republican establishment to embrace the outsider candidate. While Trump during his campaign frequently promised to “drain the swamp” of the political establishment in Washington, McGahn has an extensive history in the capital, especially in conservative politics. McGahn served for years as counsel to the National Republican Congressional Committee, the arm of the Republican Party that oversees campaigns for the U.S. House of Representatives.  During his time at the FEC, McGahn was an advocate for loosening restrictions on campaign spending and was widely praised for opening up more of the commission’s internal processes to the public. Along with providing guidance on ethics issues, the White House Counsel’s office advises the president on the legality of proposed executive orders and legislation passed by Congress and vets potential administration appointees, including Supreme Court justices.  “Don has a brilliant legal mind, excellent character and a deep understanding of constitutional law,” Trump said in a statement.  Trump, a businessman who has never held public office, has real estate and leisure holdings all over the world, sparking concerns that his investments could color his decision-making in office. Trump has said that he will hand over day-to-day responsibilities of running his company to his children, but he has resisted calls to place his assets in a blind trust. Trump also has expressed interest in finding a way to bypass a federal anti-nepotism law in order to give his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a formal White House role.  When Trump met with President Barack Obama earlier this month, Obama advised Trump during their Oval Office chat that his White House counsel would be an important job. Trump has vowed to reverse Obama’s executive orders in a number of areas, including immigration and gun control. He also must nominate someone to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. McGahn will be tasked with shepherding the nominee through confirmation hearings. Trump, who is spending the Thanksgiving holiday weekend at his home in Palm Beach, Florida, also continued to round out his national security team on Friday, naming Kathleen Troia “K.T.” McFarland, as his deputy national security adviser.  McFarland served in three Republican administrations and was an aide to Henry Kissinger in the 1970s. A strong backer of Trump during the election campaign, McFarland will work with Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, Trump’s pick as his national security adviser. Neither position requires confirmation by the U.S Senate. The appointments came amid reports that Trump’s aides are divided about his choice for secretary of state, with some preferring 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who harshly criticized Trump during the campaign, and others backing Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor. Transition officials on Friday downplayed any internal tension, calling reports of discord “overblown.”  Officials said that after returning to New York, Trump will meet with several more potential cabinet picks on Monday, including John Allison, the former chief executive of BB&T Corp who has been mentioned as a possible choice for U.S. Treasury secretary, and Paul Atkins, a former commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Summary: कानूनी, नैतिकता के मुद्दों को हल करने के लिए ट्रम्प ने वाशिंगटन के वकील का रुख किया


SYDNEY/MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Police have arrested a 20-year-old man suspected of planning to use an automatic rifle for a mass shooting on New Year s Eve in downtown Melbourne, Australia s second largest city. Victoria state police said on Tuesday that the man was acting alone and had not been able to acquire a firearm before his arrest late on Monday.  Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton said the man, an Australian citizen with Somalian parents, had been monitored by authorities since the beginning of the year.   He s accessed documents produced by al-Qaeda Arabian Peninsula which is a guide book in respect to how to commit a terrorist act and also how to use firearms, guns and handguns and rifles,  Patton said at a press conference in Melbourne.  We are alleging that ... he is a sympathiser of ISIS.     The man had planned to shoot as many people as possible at Melbourne s Federation Square, which swells with crowds on New Year s Eve as the focus of the city s celebrations, Patton said. He was charged with preparing to commit a terrorist attack and gathering documents likely to facilitate a terrorist act, according to the Australian Federal Police Australia, a staunch U.S. ally that sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, has been on heightened alert since 2014 for attacks by home-grown militants returning from fighting in the Middle East or their supporters. A gunman in a deadly 2014 Sydney cafe siege boasted about links with Islamic State militants, although no direct ties with the group were established. The shooting murder of a police accountant by a 15-year old boy in 2016 was claimed by Islamic State. Around a dozen significant plots have been foiled since the alert was issued, according to officials, including a plot to attack prominent sites in Melbourne last Christmas Eve and a plan to blow up an Etihad Airways flight from Sydney to Abu Dhabi using a bomb disguised as a meat mincer.

Summary: ऑस्ट्रेलिया पुलिस ने मेलबर्न में एन. वाई. ई. हमले की साजिश रचने के आरोपी व्यक्ति को गिरफ्तार किया


BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Monday it hopes the Iran nuclear deal will stay intact, playing an important role in keeping the peace, after a senior U.S. official said President Donald Trump is expected to decertify the agreement. The official, speaking last week on condition of anonymity, said Trump was also expected to roll out a broader U.S. strategy on Iran that would be more confrontational. The Trump administration has frequently criticized Iran s conduct in the Middle East. Trump, who has called the pact an  embarrassment  and  the worst deal ever negotiated , has been weighing whether it serves U.S. security interests as he faces an Oct. 15 deadline for certifying that Iran is complying with its terms. Speaking in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the Iran nuclear deal was a good example of how to solve something peacefully through talks.  The agreement had played a positive and important role in ensuring nuclear non-proliferation and protecting peace and stability in the Middle East, she added.   We hope that the comprehensive Iran nuclear agreement can continue to be earnestly implemented,  Hua told a daily news briefing. Iranian authorities have repeatedly said Tehran would not be the first to violate the accord, under which Iran agreed to restrict its nuclear program in return for the lifting of most international sanctions that had crippled its economy. If Trump declines to certify Iran s compliance, U.S. congressional leaders would have 60 days to decide whether to reimpose sanctions on Tehran suspended under the agreement. The prospect that Washington could renege on the pact, which was signed by the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, the European Union and Iran, has worried some U.S. allies. China has close economic and diplomatic ties with Tehran, and was also instrumental in pushing through the landmark 2015 deal.

Summary: ट्रंप की आलोचना के बीच चीन ने ईरान परमाणु समझौते के बरकरार रहने की उम्मीद जताई


THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The U.N. war crimes court that prosecuted atrocities committed during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and put former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic on trial, closed its doors on Thursday after two decades.  Today it s common for the U.N. Security Council to call for perpetrators of the worst crimes be held responsible. .... Accountability has taken root in our collective conscience,  said U.N. Secretary General Ant nio Guterres of the court s legacy at a ceremony in The Hague.     When the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia  was set up in 1993, the Balkan wars were still raging and few thought it stood much chance of success. But it went on through international co-operation to capture and try every one of the 161 suspects it indicted who didn t die first. It was the first serious attempt to hold war criminals responsible for their actions since the Nuremberg trials after World War Two. Now the idea that international courts or special tribunals will be set up to try war crimes after conflicts has become commonplace.  The ICTY had begun to fade from popular consciousness outside of the Balkans until the conviction last month of Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic of genocide for the massacre of thousands of unarmed men and boys at Srebrenica, Bosnia in 1995.  Days later, Bosnian Croat general Slobodan Praljak committed suicide in the courtroom by drinking a cyanide potion moments after his conviction and 20-year sentence were upheld. A low came in 2006 when Milosevic, whose trial had dragged on for years, died of a heart attack in his cell in 2006 before a verdict was reached in his case. Victims attended the closing ceremony, notably Munira Subasic, representing the  Mothers of Srebrenica  group who lobbied for justice for the more than 8,000 boys and men who were massacred by Serb forces at Srebrenica in 1995. Prominent figures included Bosnian Serb military leader Radovan Karadzic, who was convicted in 2016 and sentenced to 40 years, and Ratko Mladic, convicted last month and sentenced to life. Both are appealing their convictions. The court s architects hoped that establishing what happened during the war and punishing its worst offenders would help reconcile Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims. However, Prosecutor Serge Brammertz said while the court brought justice for some, it had not brought the communities together.  Throughout the region war criminals are seen as heroes and victims are ignored , he said. At the bittersweet closing ceremony, Alfons Orie, the presiding judge in Mladic s case, performed part of Handel s oratio  Solomon , singing the part of Solomon.

Summary: मिलोसेविक पर मुकदमा चलाने वाली संयुक्त राष्ट्र की युद्ध अपराध अदालत ने दरवाजे बंद कर दिए


CHICAGO (Reuters) - Illinois’ governor on Wednesday proposed boosting the shrinking ranks of the Illinois State Police in an effort to quell a steady increase in gun violence spilling over from Chicago’s neighborhoods onto the city’s expressways.  Bruce Rauner’s proposed budget would add a projected 170 troopers through two cadet classes, one this year and another during the 2019 fiscal year. Seventy of these troopers would be sent to the Chicago area.      “Those officers will allow us to send more patrols to the Chicago area, to the expressways to counter the violence that has spilled over onto the highways there,” the Republican governor told lawmakers in his Springfield budget address.  The number of Illinois State Police troopers has declined significantly since 2008 when there were 2,105 sworn officers, according to state police data. That number dropped by more than 400 troopers to 1,671 as of last year. Rauner took office in 2015.  Feuding between Rauner and Democrats who control the legislature has kept Illinois without a full operating budget since July 2015, which has meant no cadet hires for the state police in 2015 and 2016. A six-month fiscal 2017 budget expired on Dec. 31. At the same time, the number of shootings on Chicago-area expressways has consistently increased, with law enforcement placing the blame on increased gang activity.  There were just nine Chicago-area expressway shootings in 2011 and 2012. Shooting incidents jumped to 19 in 2014 from 16 in 2013. The number nearly doubled to 37 in 2015 and rose again to 47 in 2016.  Three of last year’s shootings were fatal.   There have been two confirmed shootings on the expressways so far this year and six others that are unconfirmed, Illinois State Police spokesman Jason Bradley said by email.  The violence in 2016 came as part of a broader surge in violence across Chicago, the nation’s third most populous city.   With the additions to police numbers, there will be an increase in overall state police headcount of about 140 to an estimated 2,651 for the 2018 fiscal year from an estimated 2,511 for fiscal 2017.  The cost of the two classes for the 2018 fiscal year will be $10.5 million, the proposed budget said. The annualized cost of the new officers, including salaries and benefits, will be $20 million.

Summary: इलिनोइस ने हिंसा पर अंकुश लगाने के प्रयास में राज्य पुलिस को नियुक्त करने का प्रस्ताव रखा


NICE/MOSCOW (Reuters) - A French judge put Russian businessman and lawmaker Suleiman Kerimov, whose interests the Kremlin has pledged to defend, under formal investigation on Wednesday after his arrest linked to a French tax evasion case, the prosecutor said. The investigation, a step that often but not always leads to a trial in the French legal system, was opened on suspicion of aggravated laundering of tax fraud proceeds, a crime that carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years. The judge decided that Kerimov could be released from detention but had to turn in his passport and could not leave the Alpes-Maritime county Nice is in. He was also ordered to post a bail of five million euros ($5.9 million) and to check in with police several times per week. The Kremlin said earlier that it would spare no effort to defend the rights of Kerimov, a 51-year-old billionaire who was arrested Monday night in the French Riviera resort city of Nice. Shares in Polyus, Russia s biggest gold producer which is controlled by Kerimov s family, fell on the news of his detention.  We will do everything in our power to protect his lawful interests,  Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters.  Intensive work is now being undertaken by the foreign ministry.  The prosecution requested that Kerimov be kept in custody and a decision by a judge was expected soon. A second person was also put under formal investigation. A representative for Kerimov in the upper house of Russia s parliament, where he sits as a lawmaker, declined to comment on the case on Wednesday when contacted by Reuters. Polyus also declined to comment. Russia s state-run Rossiya 24 TV station, citing an unnamed source, reported that Kerimov had denied any guilt. It was not immediately clear if a lawyer had been hired to represent Kerimov in France. In the lower house of parliament, lawmaker Rizvan Kurbanov asked the Russian foreign ministry to make representations on Kerimov s behalf with the French authorities.  We have still not received from the French authorities any explanation of the reasons for the detention of our colleague,  Kurbanov told parliament.  All this testifies to an unprecedented demarche by the French,  he said, adding that he hoped the Russian foreign ministry would issue a formal protest. Shares in Polyus fell more than 3 percent in early trade in Moscow on Wednesday but then recovered some ground to close down 1.25 percent. Originally from the mainly Muslim Russian region of Dagestan, Kerimov built his lucrative natural resources business through a combination of debt, an appetite for risk, and political connections. He owned top flight soccer club Anzhi Makhachkala until he sold it in 2016. Kerimov s fortune peaked at $17.5 billion in 2008 before slumping to just $3 billion in 2009, according to Forbes magazine, due to so-called margin calls on his assets triggered by the 2007-2009 global financial crisis. In March this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree giving Kerimov the state award  For Services to the Fatherland, second class  for his contribution to Russian parliamentary life. French police arrested Kerimov at Nice airport on Monday evening. A French judicial source said the investigation centered on the purchase of several luxury residences on the French Riviera via shell companies, something that could have enabled Kerimov to reduce taxes owed to the French state. ($1 = 0.8465 euros)

Summary: फ्रांस में जांच के दायरे में रूसी अरबपति


MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called on Monday for the United States and North Korea to start negotiations, the RIA news agency reported. Lavrov was cited as saying that Russia was ready to facilitate such negotiations. Moscow has long called for Washington and Pyongyang to hold talks aimed at de-escalating tensions around North Korea s nuclear and missile program. North Korea s foreign ministry said on Sunday that the latest U.N. sanctions against North Korea were an act of war and tantamount to a complete economic blockade against it.

Summary: रूस के लावरोव ने अमेरिका और उत्तर कोरिया से बातचीत शुरू करने का आह्वान कियाः आरआईए


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump suffered a stunning political setback on Friday in a Congress controlled by his own party when Republican leaders pulled legislation to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system, a major 2016 election campaign promise of the president and his allies. House of Representatives leaders yanked the bill after a rebellion by Republican moderates and the party’s most conservative lawmakers left them short of votes, ensuring that Trump’s first major legislative initiative since taking office on Jan. 20 ended in failure. Democrats were unified against it. House Republicans had planned a vote on the measure after Trump late on Thursday cut off negotiations with Republicans who had balked at the plan and issued an ultimatum to vote on Friday, win or lose. But desperate lobbying by the White House and Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan was unable to round up the 216 votes needed for passage. “We learned a lot about loyalty. We learned a lot about the vote-getting process,” Trump told reporters at the White House, although he sought to shift the blame to the Democrats even though his party controls the White House, the House and the Senate. With Friday’s legislative collapse, Democratic former President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement, the 2010 Affordable Care Act - known as Obamacare - remains in place despite seven years of Republican promises to dismantle it. The healthcare failure called into question not only Trump’s ability to get other key parts of his agenda, including tax cuts and a boost in infrastructure spending, through Congress, but the Republican Party’s capacity to govern effectively. Neither Trump nor Ryan indicated any plans to try to tackle healthcare legislation again anytime soon. Trump said he would turn his attention to getting “big tax cuts” through Congress, another tricky proposition. Republican supporters said the legislation would achieve their goal of rolling back the government’s “nanny state” role in healthcare. The White House made undoing Obamacare its top priority when Trump took office two months ago. But the White House and House leaders were unable to come up with a plan that satisfied the clashing interests of moderates and conservatives, despite Trump’s vaunted image as a deal maker. Amid a chaotic scramble for votes, Ryan, who championed the bill, met with Trump at the White House. Ryan said he recommended that it be withdrawn from the House floor because he did not have the votes to pass it, and Trump agreed. “We were just probably anywhere from 10 to 15 votes short,” Trump said. “With no Democrat support we couldn’t quite get there.”  Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said the bill failed “because of two traits that have plagued the Trump presidency since he took office: incompetence and broken promises.” Democrats said the bill would take away medical insurance from millions of Americans and leave the more-than-$3 trillion U.S. healthcare system in disarray. And some moderate Republicans opposed the bill because of worries that millions of America would be hurt. “There were things in this bill that I didn’t particularly like,” Trump added, without specifying what those were, but expressed confidence in Ryan’s leadership. “Perhaps the best thing that could happen is exactly what happened today, because we’ll end up with a truly great healthcare bill in the future after this mess known as Obamacare explodes,” said Trump, who had posted multiple tweets throughout March proclaiming that “Obamacare is imploding” and repeatedly saying that Republicans were coming together to pass the bill. Friday’s events cast doubt on whether Ryan can get major legislation approved by fractious Republican lawmakers. “I will not sugarcoat this. This is a disappointing day for us. Doing big things is hard,” Ryan said at a news conference, adding that his fellow Republicans are experiencing what he called “growing pains” transitioning from an opposition party to a governing party. “Obamacare’s the law of the land,” Ryan added. “We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future.” Members of the Freedom Caucus, the House’s most conservative members, were instrumental in the bill’s failure, opposing it among other reasons because they considered parts too similar to Obamacare. Trump said he was disappointed and “a little surprised” with the Freedom Caucus opposition. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said under the Republican legislation 14 million people would lose medical coverage by next year and more than 24 million would be uninsured in 2026. News that the bill had been pulled before a final vote was greeted initially with a small sigh of relief by U.S. equity investors, who earlier in the week had been fretful that an outright defeat would damage Trump’s other priorities, such as tax cuts and infrastructure spending.     Benchmark U.S. stock market indexes ended the session mixed after rallying back from session lows following the news. The S&P 500 Index ended fractionally lower, the blue chip Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped about 0.3 percent and the Nasdaq Composite Index rose about 0.2 percent.  Shares of hospital operators finished sharply higher, with the S&P healthcare facilities index up 2.7 percent, while the S&P 500 healthcare sector edged down 0.03 percent. The dollar strengthened modestly on the news, and U.S. Treasury bond yields edged up from session lows. Trump said he would be “totally open” to working with Democrats on healthcare “when they all become civilized.” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said working to lower prescription drug prices was one area of possible cooperation with Republicans. Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher said before the bill was pulled that voting it down would be “neutering Trump” while empowering his opponents. “You don’t cut the balls off a bull and then expect that he can go out and get the job done,” Rohrabacher told Reuters. “This will emasculate Trump and we can’t do that. ... If we bring this down now, Trump will have lost all of his leverage to pass whatever bill it is, whether it’s the tax bill or whatever reforms that he wants.” Representative Joe Barton of Texas, when asked why his fellow Republicans were so united over the past seven years to dump Obamacare only to fall apart when they actually do something about it, said, “Sometimes you’re playing fantasy football and sometimes you’re in the real game.” Obamacare boosted the number of Americans with health insurance through mandates on individuals and employers, and income-based subsidies. About 20 million Americans gained insurance coverage through the law. The House plan would have rescinded a range of taxes created by Obamacare, ended a penalty on people who refuse to obtain health insurance, and ended Obamacare’s income-based subsidies to help people buy insurance while creating less-generous age-based tax credits It also would have ended Obamacare’s expansion of the Medicaid state-federal insurance program for the poor, cut future federal Medicaid funding and let states impose work requirements on some Medicaid recipients.  House leaders agreed to a series of last-minute changes to try to win over disgruntled conservatives, including ending the Obamacare requirement that insurers cover certain “essential benefits” such as maternity care, mental health services and prescription drug coverage. Click on the links below for related graphics: Graphic on Obamacare and Republican healthcare bill (tmsnrt.rs/2n0ZMKf) Graphic on poll on Americans' views of the Republican healthcare bill (tmsnrt.rs/2n7f3e4)

Summary: अमेरिकी हाउस हेल्थकेयर बिल के गिरने के बाद ट्रम्प ने विफलता का स्वाद चखा


KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia s royals made a rare intervention into public affairs on Tuesday, calling for unity and religious harmony after what they described as  excessive actions  in the name of Islam. Members of minorities have expressed concern in recent months about what they see as intolerance in Malaysia, which is 60 percent Muslim with sizable Buddhist, Christian and Hindu communities. In a statement issued on Tuesday and reported by state news agency Bernama, the nine sultans who serve as hereditary titular heads of individual Malaysian states said people must respect the constitutional principle that Malaysia is a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional country.  It is feared that the excessive actions of certain individuals of late can undermine the harmonious relations among the people of various races and religions,  said the statement signed by the Keeper of the Rulers  Seal, Syed Danial Syed Ahmad, according to the Bernama report.  The Rulers feel that the issue of harmony has deep implication if any action is associated with and undertaken in the name of Islam.  The comments, which come ahead of a gathering of the Conference of Rulers starting on Wednesday, are unusual as the sultans largely assume a ceremonial role and rarely speak on the functioning of the state or society. The statement referred to the opening of Muslim-only launderettes reported to have appeared in southern Johor state and northern Perlis state. Other instances which have made headlines in Malaysia in recent months, although they were not referred to directly in the royals  statement, include bans on beer festivals and censorship of films and music.   Unity among Malaysia s multi-ethnic and multi-religious people is key to ensuring the country s ongoing stability,  the statement said.

Summary: मलेशिया के राजघरानों ने दुर्लभ सार्वजनिक हस्तक्षेप में धार्मिक सहिष्णुता का आह्वान किया


(Reuters) - An Illinois law allowing voters in highly populated areas to register to vote at polling places on election day was reinstated on Tuesday by a federal court, pending an appeal of a ruling declaring the statute unfair to people in smaller communities. The state is seeking to overturn a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan, which found that the law discriminates against voters in less-populated counties. The law, passed in late 2014 by the Democratic-led legislature and signed into law in early 2015 by former Democratic Governor Pat Quinn, allowed election day voter registration for the first time, including at polling places. But the section of the law regarding polling place registration pertained only to counties with populations of 100,000 or more. The conservative Liberty Justice Center, of Chicago, filed a lawsuit in August, saying the law was discriminatory. Der-Yeghiayan agreed, writing that the law provided an advantage to urban voters over their rural counterparts.  The state of Illinois appealed the ruling last month, and in their order issued Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit granted the state’s request to stay the order until the appeal was adjudicated, court records show. U.S. voters will go to the polls to choose a president, Congressional representatives and other officials on Nov. 8. On Tuesday, the appellate court ordered attorneys on both sides to say by Thursday whether they would like the appeals process to be sped up due to the proximity of the election.

Summary: इलिनोइस में उसी दिन मतदाता पंजीकरण अस्थायी रूप से बहाल किया गया


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Wall Street investment banks must take losses amid efforts to fix Puerto Rico’s debt crisis, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said, adding that policymakers must focus on the island’s people, not financial firms. “These wealthy investors must take a significant haircut. The people in Puerto Rico should not be asked to suffer even more, so that a handful of wealthy investors can become even wealthier,” Sanders said in a statement on Friday.

Summary: सैंडर्सः प्यूर्टो रिको ऋण संकट में कंपनियों को बाल कटवाने चाहिए


ANKARA (Reuters) - Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted on Friday that Tehran would never use its military might against any country, except in self-defense, in reaction to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tough approach towards Tehran.  “We will never use our weapons against anyone, except in self-defense. Let us see if any of those who complain can make the same statement,” he tweeted.

Summary: ईरान का कहना है कि वह आत्मरक्षा के अलावा कभी भी किसी के खिलाफ अपने हथियारों का इस्तेमाल नहीं करेगा


BEIRUT (Reuters) - A breakthrough in U.N.-backed Syria peace talks in Geneva this week seems hardly more likely than in seven failed earlier rounds as President Bashar al-Assad pushes for total military victory and his opponents stick by their demand he leave power.  U.N. Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura said on Monday the Syrian government had not yet confirmed that it would attend the talks. A Syrian newspaper reported that the government delegation would delay its planned Tuesday arrival in Geneva because of the opposition s insistence Assad step down. The opposition s stance is seen by Damascus and its allies as divorced from reality after the government s steady march of victories since Russia entered the war in 2015. The rebels have been forced from all Syria s big cities and their hopes of toppling Assad by military means look finished. The opposition has also accused the government of refusing to seriously engage.  The Assad regime must not be allowed to play for time while people are being besieged and bombed,  Yahya al-Aridi, newly appointed head of the opposition s negotiating committee, said on Sunday. Aridi was chosen last week after the opposition rejigged its negotiations committee - jettisoning as its leader a more hardline opponent of Assad in what some speculated might be a move towards softening its position. But the statement it put out after meeting on Friday reiterated its demand that Assad go before the start of a political transition under any peace deal. Last week a senior Assad adviser said talks could succeed only if rebels laid down their arms. Over the weekend, air strikes on the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta district near Damascus intensified, killing 41 people on Sunday and Monday, according to a war monitor.   You cannot expect very much,  said Nikolaos Van Dam, a former Dutch diplomat in Damascus and author of two books about Syria.   The regime doesn t want to really negotiate. They want to reconquer every inch of Syrian territory and then negotiate. But then the opposition would have no bargaining chips,  he said. The Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and caused the world s worst refugee crisis, driving 11 million from their homes. All previous diplomatic initiatives have swiftly collapsed over the opposition demand that Assad leave power and his refusal to go. Troops from Russia, Iran, Turkey and the United States, as well as Shi ite militias from Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan, have all now joined arrived on the battlefield.  Russia has pushed its own parallel track of diplomacy since early this year, bringing together Assad s other main ally Iran, and Turkey, which has been one of the biggest rebel supporters.  Russia has elections next year and President Vladimir Putin wants to show progress towards a political deal after two years of fighting far from Russian soil. Moscow has already said it will bring many troops home from Syria by the end of the year.  Putin may also seek to tout diplomatic progress as he angles for the West to take some of the burden of Syria s post-war reconstruction, now likely to fall on Russia, Iran and China.  Western foreign ministers said in September their support hinges on a  credible political process leading to a genuine political transition , a process they have said requires the involvement of the opposition.   Russia wants the end of the war but it wants its ally intact. So what would be the compromise that is acceptable to the opposition or to the other countries? It s not clear to me,  said Van Dam. Moscow now plans a  Syrian Congress , bringing together the government and some opposition groups to write a new constitution leading to elections. The main opposition rejects the idea, saying all talks must come under the United Nations. But the government has said it backs the congress, as has Turkey, which has some sway over rebel groups in the northwest.   There is an acceleration in the political solution on the basis of a unified Syria headed by Bashar al-Assad, with amendments to the constitution and in the election law,  a senior, pro-Assad official in the region said. The Syrian government declared on Sunday it would support the formation of a committee that will discuss the constitution and is expected to be set up at the congress. It also said it would support U.N. participation in legislative elections to be held after that discussion.  Ultimately Russia s objective is to dress up a limited military victory for the Assad regime and the Iranians in Syria as a diplomatic one,  said Andrew Tabler, a Syria specialist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think-tank.  Because the regime and the Iranians don t have the manpower to completely occupy all Syria, or to rebuild Syria, or the money to rebuild Syria, they need international buy-in,  he said.  I don t think it will be easy for them because the United States and others know what they are trying to do.  This week s Geneva talks will focus on the issues of elections and a constitution, Ramzi Ramzi, the deputy United Nations special envoy for Syria said in Damascus on Saturday. De Mistura said on Monday negotiations should take place at Geneva and without any preconditions, and  all other initiatives should support the U.N. mediation process.  After recapturing the last major rebel urban stronghold in East Aleppo a year ago, and advancing across central and eastern Syria against Islamic State this year, the government now controls far more territory than any other force in the country.  But rebels still hold a swathe of northwest Syria next to Turkey, and an enclave in the southwest near Israel and Jordan. They have other pockets near Damascus and Homs.  Kurdish groups and allied Arab militia backed by the United States also hold the northeast and are holding elections there this week for local councils in an effort to cement autonomy.  They have not been invited to the Geneva talks and are regarded by Syria s neighbor Turkey as enemies. Assad has sworn to recover all of his state, and visiting Iranian officials have indicated that new military campaigns may soon start against both the rebels and the Kurds.

Summary: जिनेवा वार्ता में सीरिया शांति प्रगति की बहुत कम संभावना देखी गई


MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia may impose counter-measures on the United States after U.S. President Donald Trump signed into law a new round of economic sanctions on Moscow, the Russian foreign ministry said on Wednesday. The new U.S. penalties were short-sighted and risked harming global stability, it said in a statement on its website. “It’s high time to realize that threats and attempts to exert pressure on Russia will not make it change its course or sacrifice its national interests,” the statement read.

Summary: रूस नए प्रतिबंधों के बाद अमेरिका पर जवाबी कार्रवाई कर सकता हैः विदेश मंत्रालय


NEW YORK (IFR) - Jared Kushner has divested his equity interest in 666 Fifth Avenue, a 39-story office and retail building on Manhattan’s famed shopping area, according to a spokesperson at Kushner Companies. Kushner said he would step down as CEO of Kushner Companies, a family owned real estate company, and begin to divest himself of substantial assets after he was made a senior White House advisor to US President Donald Trump, his father-in-law. “Mr. Kushner divested his equity interest in 666 Fifth Avenue, and has no role in the management or operations of the property,” a Kushner Companies spokesperson said in an emailed statement to IFR. “Mr. Kushner’s ownership interests were sold using a third-party appraisal for fair market value to a family trust, of which he is not a beneficiary,” the spokesperson said. Neither Ivanka Trump nor her and Kushner’s children are beneficiaries to the family trust, the spokesperson also confirmed. When asked by IFR, Kushner Companies declined to give any detail about the sale price of the equity stake and declined to discuss any aspect of the outstanding debt on the property. Kushner bought the property for US$1.8bn in 2007 - the highest price ever paid for a single office building sale in the United States at the time, according to Kroll Bond Rating Agency - but it was last valued well below that level. The last appraisal, completed in 2011 as part of a debt restructuring, valued the building at just US$820m. Kroll, which said the building was 20% vacant as of July 2016, valued the property at US$982.1m. Kushner and his partners in 666 Fifth took out US$1.2bn of senior debt to buy the property, which was later packaged and sold into three CMBS deals. It is not clear what the divestiture means for the debt on the property. The senior debt was restructured in 2011 and extended to February 2019. As part of the restructuring, Kushner brought in Vornado Realty as a partner. A call and email to Vornado was not immediately returned.

Summary: कुशनर ने न्यूयॉर्क की प्रमुख संपत्ति में हिस्सेदारी बेची