Iraq's Kurdish peshmerga forces are coordinating a counter-offensive against jihadists around the Iraqi city of Mosul with Kurdish fighters from Syria and Turkey, a political leader said on Wednesday.

Published: 06 August 2014

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Poland's capital ground to a halt on Friday and television and radio stations fell silent nationwide for 70 seconds as air-raid sirens wailed to mark seven decades since Polish insurgents launched the doomed Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis.

Traffic halted and pedestrians stood in silent homage at 1500 GMT in memory of the nearly 200,000 mostly civilian victims of the 63-day insurrection launched on August 1, 1944 in a doomed bid to secure Poland's post war independence.

"The uprising broke out because there was no other way to avenge the humiliation, the camps, all the tragedy that was inflicted on Poland," veteran Bogdan Horoszowski told AFP at a wreath-laying ceremony at Warsaw's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

"We pay homage to the insurgents, knowing that the Warsaw Uprising paved the way to our peaceful transition to freedom 25 years ago," Warsaw mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz said at the ceremony, referring to Poland's negotiated end to communism in 1989.

The uprising by Polish Home Army (AK) partisans is sometimes confused with the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in which Jewish partisans imprisoned by the Nazis in an area of the Polish capital launched their own doomed insurgency.

In 1944, around 50,000 AK partisans, mostly young men and women in their late teens and early twenties, scouts and even children, took up arms against the Nazi Germans occupying the capital, as the Soviet Red Army was poised to invade it from the east.

Vastly better equipped, the Nazis slaughtered insurgents and civilians, many in aerial bombardments.

Sixty-three days of savage battles turned the capital into a smouldering heap of rubble.

Published: 04 August 2014

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US Secretary of State John Kerry told Narendra Modi that India's stance on a key WTO trade deal sent the wrong message, as he met the country's new prime minister for the first time on Friday.

Kerry has expressed optimism about expanding cooperation between the world's two largest democracies during a first visit aimed at reviving a relationship clouded by mistrust.

But a raft of disputes has cast a shadow over hopes for a warmer relationship, with India on Thursday blocking a major World Trade Organization pact on customs procedures.

During the meeting -- aimed at breaking the ice with a leader once shunned by Washington -- Kerry told Modi India's stance on the deal was at odds with his desire to open up the country's economy.

"We note that the prime minister is very focused on his signal of open to business and creating opportunities and therefore the failure of implementing TFA (Trade Facilitation Agreement) sends a confusing signal and undermines that very message that he is seeking to send about India," a US official quoted Kerry as saying.

"While we understand India's food security concerns, the trade facilitation agreement is one that will bring tremendous benefit, particularly to the world's poor. India's actions therefore are not in keeping with the prime minister's vision."

Kerry urged India to work with the United States to move the WTO process forward, the official said.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official also said Modi told Kerry that while areas of difference would always exist, "what is critical is what we do to enhance and build on our trust".

Earlier, Kerry said the United States wanted to "try to really take the relationship to a new place", following a series of diplomatic spats with India.

Washington has little relationship with Modi, a Hindu nationalist who was refused a US visa in 2005 over allegations that he turned a blind eye to anti-Muslim riots as leader of the western state of Gujarat.

The United States caught up with other Western nations during the election campaign, sending its ambassador to meet Modi who since taking office has shown no visible signs of holding a grudge over his past treatment.

But US officials, who value frank and free-wheeling relationships with foreign leaders, are unsure what to expect from Modi who is known for his austere, solitary lifestyle and is not believed to be at ease in English.

Modi, who as a young man wandered the Himalayas, is seen as a very different character than his predecessor Manmohan Singh, a bookish Oxford-educated economist with whom President Barack Obama had found a kinship.

Published: 01 August 2014

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Two rare Sri Lankan leopard cubs have been born in a zoo in northern France, a boost for a sub-species that numbers only about 700 in the wild, the head of the facility said Tuesday.

"There are only a few of them in captivity with about 60 spread across some 20 European zoos," said Jimmy Ebel, of Maubeuge Zoo. "These leopards are under great threat due to deforestation and poaching."

Published: 30 July 2014

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Nigerian teenage weightlifter Chika Amalaha has been provisionally suspended from the Commonwealth Games after testing positive in a doping test taken after she won gold in the women's 53kg category, the Commonwealth Games Federation announced Tuesday.

The 16-year-old Amalaha provided an 'A' sample on July 25 which revealed traces of diuretics and masking agents.

She will have a 'B' sample tested at a laboratory in London on July 30.

Commonwealth Games Federation chief executive Mike Hooper said: "We [have] issued a formal notice of disclosure to an athlete following an adverse analytical finding as a consequence of an in-competition test.

Published: 30 July 2014

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The arbitration court in The Hague has ordered Russia to pay shareholders of Yukos $50 billion in compensation over its seizure of the one-time oil giant, main shareholder GML Ltd said in London on Monday.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) ruled on July 18 that Russia pay the claimants "in excess of $50 billion" after finding it had forced Yukos into bankruptcy and sold its assets to state-owned businesses for political purposes, the claimant's lawyer Emmanuel Gaillard said.

The claims were brought in 2005 by Hulley Enterprises Limited and Veteran Petroleum Limited, both based in Cyprus, and Isle of Man-based Yukos Universal Limited.

The arbitral tribunals unanimously held that the Russian Federation had effectively expropriated the claimants' assets, according to the ruling on the PCA website.

Published: 28 July 2014

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An Australian senator who told breakfast radio she would only date men who were rich and "well-hung" apologised Tuesday, saying she had tried to hide her embarrassment with a joke.

Jacqui Lambie, who took her seat in the national parliament's upper house earlier this month, told Tasmania's Heart 107.3 that she had not been in a relationship for more than a decade.

When the breakfast hosts suggested they help her find love, she replied: "Now they must have heaps of cash and they've got to have a package between their legs, let's be honest.

"And I don't need them to speak, they don't even need to speak."

The 43-year-old's comments prompted a young male listener to ring in to say he was confident he met her criteria, in part because he had inherited some money and had experience with older women.

"I'm just a bit concerned because you're so young, I'm not sure you'd be able to handle Jacqui Lambie," the outspoken politician, who served a decade in Australia's armed forces, said.

The senator then asked: "Are you well-hung?"

Published: 23 July 2014

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Chinese reports about a giant inflatable toad have been deleted from the Internet after social media users compared the puffed-up animal to a former Communist Party chief.

The installation of a giant inflatable duck in Hong Kong's harbour last year sparked a national craze for oversized blow-up wildlife, with several Chinese cities launching their own imitations.

The latest, a 22-metre-high (72-feet) toad, appeared in a Beijing park last weekend, but met with mockery from social media users who compared its appearance to that of former President Jiang Zemin.

The website of China's official Xinhua news agency and popular web portal Sina had deleted their reports on the animal -- seen as a symbol of good fortune in traditional Chinese culture -- by Wednesday.

Published: 23 July 2014

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Federal regulators and Citigroup are set to announce Monday a $7 billion settlement to resolve charges that the bank sold faulty mortgage-backed securities ahead of the 2008 financial crisis, US media reported.

The deal ends months of negotiations between US Treasury Department investigators and Citigroup, people briefed on the matter told The New York Times.

Citigroup initially proposed paying $363 million, while the Department of Justice was seeking $12 billion and threatening to sue the bank.

Bank of America is reportedly in talks with the Justice Department on a similar deal for $12 billion or more. That would follow a $9.5 billion settlement with the Federal Housing Finance Agency over mortgage-backed securities sold by BofA to mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Published: 14 July 2014

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As some European cities install spikes on pavements to prevent homeless people bedding down for the night, one architect in Slovakia plans to give them a proper abode -- made from billboards.

The Gregory Project uses advertising hoardings, usually placed along roads in a V-shape to be visible from both directions, to create small but functional homes for the homeless by adding a third wall and a roof.

Slovak architect Michal Polacek told AFP he hopes his novel design will "help the homeless to return to normal life, find a job and eventually find a better place to stay".

Polacek's one-bedroom triangular homes include a kitchen and bathroom and are powered by solar panels or connected to the same network that lights the billboards at night.

He says the cost of building the homes can be covered by billboard advertising revenues.

"I was inspired by a friend who once pointed at a billboard and said 'Hey, I could live up there!' and also by the desire to help those less fortunate," Polacek added.

He has yet to construct his design but says it is available as a free, open-source platform for anyone wanting to use it.

 

 

Published: 11 July 2014

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