Month: October 2016

The mystic allegedly punched and kicked two toddlers and an eight-month-old baby to death during exorcism rituals on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, according to police and relatives.
Local lieutenant-major Kyaw Naing Soe said the “exorcist” put the villagers into a trance, then killed the children as they watched.
“On the night of the 18th, the three-year-old boy was beaten to death and the culprit threw him in the Twante canal,” he told AFP.
“On his return, he continued to beat the three young girls and two of them were killed.”
The uncle of the dead boy, Tun Naing, said the villagers had lost their senses after the exorcist fed them “blessed” water, then made them stand in a circle as he chanted and cast spells.
“Because of what he did everyone was out of their mind,” Tun Naing told AFP, his eyes still glazed.
“I still feel afraid of something in my mind. I don’t understand what is happening… Some people have gone to other mystics to release themselves from the curse.”
Only a handful of people attended the dead boy’s funeral on Saturday in Twante, a town south of Myanmar’s main city Yangon.
Tun Naing said most family members were still too scared to show their faces in public.
Young novice monks covered their noses with their maroon robes to block the smell as the boy’s tiny body was carried past on a stretcher, before being buried in an unmarked grave.
A police report said the bodies of the dead children — a boy, three, a two-year-old girl and the baby — showed evidence of being punched, kicked and stamped on.
Hospital workers alerted authorities after the father of another little girl who had been beaten brought her to hospital covered in bruises.
Police have charged the “exorcist” with murder, grievous bodily harm and hiding a dead body. He is being held in Insein prison near Yangon.
While the majority of people in Myanmar are Buddhist, many also believe in spirits, astrology and “yadaya” — magic used to ward off evil or misfortune.
Former military ruler Ne Win was famously superstitious, and caused economic chaos in the late 1980s when he changed the denominations of the currency to add up to his lucky number nine.
Despite the onslaught of smartphones, Western brands and luxury hotels that have arrived since the junta ceded power in 2011, many people still consult fortune tellers and mystics for guidance.

“We need an ambulance, we need an ambulance,” an Iraqi officer says over the radio, moments after an explosives-rigged truck disappeared in a column of flame and dust.
Iraqi forces advancing toward a village in Nineveh province had already been targeted with gun and mortar fire from Islamic State group jihadists inside.
A suicide bomber then drove the explosives-rigged truck toward them, but security forces “blew up the vehicle before it reached” them, federal police Second Lieutenant Faruq Ahmed Mohammed told AFP at a position to the south.
Despite this, a police officer was lightly wounded in the blast, Mohammed said.
Security forces advanced and fell back, exchanging fire with the jihadists over a period of hours and eventually targeting them with mortar rounds.
The resistance they faced demonstrates that even a small number of jihadists can slow down larger and more heavily armed forces, especially when civilians are present — an issue Iraqi troops will continue to face as they push north toward the city of Mosul.
Earlier in the day, black smoke rose from fires in the village as Iraqi forces slowly advanced in armoured vehicles along a dusty track through the desert to avoid bombs planted by IS on the main road.
Military engineers were working to clear the road — efforts evidenced by periodic explosions that sent clouds of dust rising into the air — but progress was slow.
Iraqi police and soldiers took position on a hill to the south of the village, while other units later moved in from the east, the main scene of the fighting for most of the day.
IS fired mortar rounds toward the advancing forces, most of which missed by a wide margin, though at least one exploded near a group of Humvees.
White flags were raised inside the village — a signal the Iraqi government had called on civilians to use to indicate that they were present.
“There are families who have white flags inside the village, and we can’t shell (it) with the tank or with the mortar unless the families leave,” Second Lieutenant Ali Bassim of the interior ministry’s elite Rapid Response Division said.
Iraqi forces were trying to advance close enough to establish a corridor for civilians to exit, he said, but they were targeted by mortar rounds and suicide bombing.
Eventually, more troops moved toward the west side of the village, some walking while others drove slowly in Humvees, apparently seeking to identify and avoid bombs planted by the jihadists.
They exchanged machinegun fire with IS as they closed in, and security forces said they spotted another suicide bomber on the edge of the village, while more explosives-rigged vehicles were said to be waiting inside.
Iraqi forces eventually tried to destroy the waiting car bombs with a 120 millimetre mortar.
The recoil from the heavy rounds sent sheets of dust drifting across the ground when they were fired.
“The target is explosives-rigged vehicles, more than three vehicles… close to our units,” said an artillery commander who did not want to be identified by name.
The regular units “are not able to (attack) them because the vehicles are behind the houses, behind walls, behind berms,” he said.
Asked about the civilians present in the village, the commander said that six or seven vehicles had departed and that there were no more inside.
More than four hours after the fighting began, the village remained in IS hands.

Security has been stepped up on the London Underground network, police said Saturday, following the arrest of a 19-year-old man after a suspicious item was discovered on a Tube train.
“The public will see more officers, including armed police, in and around transport hubs,” a Scotland Yard spokesman told AFP.
Armed police arrested the 19-year-old in London on Friday under counter-terrorism laws in connection with the suspicious package found the day before.
An electric stun gun was used during the arrest on a busy shopping street, but no shots were fired.
The suspect, who was arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation and instigation of terrorism acts, remains in custody on Saturday.
The item, found on a train at North Greenwich station, which serves the O2 entertainment complex in southeast London, was being forensically examined.
Britain’s current national terror threat level has been set at severe — the fourth-highest of five — since August 2014, meaning an attack is considered highly likely.
The Times newspaper spoke of a “lone wolf” and said that the incident was “feared to be the first credible bombing attempt on the London transport network in more than 10 years”.
Scotland Yard refused to comment on the report.

Fierce gun battles erupted overnight between Yemeni rebels and pro-government forces along the border with Saudi Arabia despite a three-day ceasefire due to end late Saturday, military officials said.
Warplanes from the Saudi-led coalition fighting in support of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi also bombed suspected Huthi rebel missile launchers east of the capital Sanaa late Friday, a military official said.
The air raids came after Patriot missiles shot down two rebel missiles on Thursday over Marib, east of the rebel-held capital.
UN special envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said on Friday the ceasefire was “fragile but largely holding”, urging all parties “to show restraint, avoid further escalation, and strictly adhere to the 72-hour ceasefire”.
The truce took effect just before midnight on Wednesday to allow aid deliveries in Yemen, where the war has killed thousands of people and left millions homeless and hungry.
The UN envoy is liaising with the parties in an attempt to extend the ceasefire in order “to create a conducive environment for a long-lasting peace” in Yemen, he said in a statement.
He met late Friday with Yemen’s Vice President Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar in Riyadh, Yemeni state media reported.
Ahmar said government forces were “exercising restraint” and stressed that there were orders to “abide by the truce and respect UN efforts”.
But he accused the rebels of 449 violations within 24 hours after the ceasefire took effect.
Rebel-controlled media, meanwhile, accused the coalition of conducting air strikes across the country, including in the provinces of Sanaa, Saada and Jawf in the north, and Shabwa in the south.
A senior rebel, Hassan al-Sharafi, was killed in border clashes on Friday night in Saada province, the fiefdom of the Iran-backed Huthis, military officials said.
The rebels seized two hills in the Alb border area from government forces who had previously advanced from Saudi Arabia, a military official said.
Nine other rebels and four government soldiers were killed in clashes Saturday on the western outskirts of Midi, a northwestern town close to the Saudi border and the Red Sea coast, military officials said.
The fighting erupted when troops advanced towards Midi in an attempt to recapture it.
It is the sixth ceasefire attempt since the Saudi-led coalition intervened in March last year to support Hadi’s government after Huthis overran much of the impoverished country.
Nearly 6,900 people have been killed in the conflict, more than half of them civilians, while an additional three million are displaced and millions more need food aid.
Meanwhile, five suspected Al-Qaeda militants including a local chief were killed overnight Friday in a suspected US drone strike in Marib province east of Sanaa, a security official said.
They were in a vehicle that was targeted in the Wadi Obeida area.
Washington is the only government to operate drones over Yemen, but the United States rarely releases statements on its long-running bombing campaign against the country’s powerful Al-Qaeda branch.
The United States considers Al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based franchise, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, to be its most dangerous.
On Tuesday, eight Al-Qaeda suspects were killed in a similar drone strike in south Yemen.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet faces a test of strength Sunday in municipal elections that will serve as a political barometer with just over a year to go in her term.
The local polls are the last vote before general elections in 2017 that will decide the Socialist leader’s successor, at a time when the left in Chile — as in much of Latin America — is struggling.
The vote comes as Bachelet, Chile’s first woman president, has been sideswiped by a corruption scandal involving her son and is struggling to deliver on the reform agenda that got her elected by a landslide in 2013.
Opinion polls give Bachelet’s center-left coalition a razor-thin lead going into the polls, which will elect 346 mayors, plus city councils.
The elections serve as the unofficial opening of the 2017 campaign season.
After testing the political waters in the local polls, the country’s parties will nominate their presidential candidates and launch their campaigns.
On the left, the top name currently being floated is Isabel Allende — not to be confused with her distant relative of the same name, who is a best-selling novelist.
She is a senator and the daughter of former president Salvador Allende, who was overthrown by late dictator Augusto Pinochet in a 1973 coup.
Journalist and independent Senator Alejandro Guillier also scores well in opinion polls. And former president Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006) has thrown his hat in the ring, too.
On the right, former president Sebastian Pinera (2010-2014) is tipped as the likely nominee, but has yet to declare his candidacy.
Bachelet, 65, is one of the last remaining leaders from a “pink tide” of left-wing governments that swept Latin America in the last decade.
She served a first term from 2006 to 2010, and — constitutionally barred from immediate re-election — returned in 2014.
But her popularity has plunged since accusations emerged last year that her son and his wife used political influence and inside information to make $5 million on a shady real estate deal.
A separate campaign-finance scandal involving some of the country’s biggest firms and political parties has also been damaging.
Bachelet herself has not been implicated in either scandal. But they have hurt her image as a squeaky clean reformer.
Elected with 66 percent of the vote, her popularity now stands at just 23 percent.
With protesters calling for her resignation, Bachelet’s promises to overhaul the education and pension systems and change a constitution inherited from Pinochet’s repressive 17-year rule have all but ground to a halt.
The local polls come amid an economic slowdown in Chile, hit hard — like much of the region — by the plunge in global commodity prices.
Chile, the world’s top copper producer, will see economic growth of just 1.75 percent this year, before a pickup of 2.25 percent in 2017, the government forecasts.

Overnight leader Justin Thomas dropped a stunning four shots over a three-hole span on Saturday to hand Anirban Lahiri of India a four-stroke lead going into the CIMB Classic’s final round.
The American defending champion had been nearly flawless in seizing the lead in the first two rounds in Kuala Lumpur and looked on his way to retaining his sole PGA Tour title.
But Thomas, 23, went bogey, double bogey and bogey to start Saturday’s back nine, a stretch that may have decided the tournament.
He will need to be razor-sharp on Sunday to catch Lahiri, who notched nine birdies for a seven-under-par 65, his best showing of the week.
Lahiri went to 19-under overall, while Thomas salvaged a 71 at the par-72 TPC Kuala Lumpur to drop four shots behind.
Lahiri, the 2015 Asian Tour Order of Merit winner, thrived in the breezy conditions in Malaysia, ending strong with four birdies in the final five holes.
Lahiri had won at the same venue in the 2015 Maybank Malaysian Open. He said the home-away-from-home feeling served as a “boost to your confidence”.
“I’d like to think it’s a home crowd. I’ve had quite a love affair with Malaysia, whether it’s the Malaysian Open or the two EurAsia Cups where we’ve had tremendous support and there’s a lot of Indians in KL and Malaysia,” he said.
Lahiri’s last win was at the Hero Indian Open in February 2015.
Thomas also closed with a vengeance, ending with five straight birdies to pull back within range, but he was left to bemoan what he called some “really just terrible golf”.
“It was great to have that finish. I gave myself a chance, and I know I wouldn’t have done that in some of the years past,” said Thomas, who is widely touted as an up-and-coming young PGA Tour star.
“I feel like that showed a lot of me and I hope that I can ride the momentum into tomorrow.”
Thomas was tied at 15-under with Scotland’s Russell Knox, who shot a 68 on Saturday.
One stroke further back at 14-under were Derek Fathauer and James Hahn of the United States, along with Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama.
American star Keegan Bradley was at 12-under and former Masters champion Adam Scott of Australia at 11-under.
Scott, the highest-ranked player in the field at world number six, shot his best round so far on Saturday, a six-under 66.
Scott was runner-up last year to Thomas, who earned his maiden PGA Tour title.
Thomas’s 26-under-par score last year was the best showing yet in the tournament, which debuted in 2010.
The $7 million tournament is jointly sanctioned by the Asian Tour and the PGA Tour and offers $1.26 million to the winner.
It is the second event of the PGA Tour’s 2017 schedule, and offers 500 points toward the FedEX Cup championship and an invite to the winners-only 2017 Tournament of Champions.

An openly lesbian lady is asking for help to trace her estranged wife who has since turned out to be straight.
In a length Facebook post(she used someone’s account on Facebook to narrate her ordeal for fear of victimization), the desperate lady says that her wife, Judith Augo, ditched her and got married to a German man called Rolf Brand.
She however doesn’t understand why Judith ran away and got married to a straight man, yet it’s obvious her wife was missing ‘a real man’.
 
The lesbian ‘husband’ explains that she gave Judith everything a wife could ask for, but she still ended up dumping her for a straight man.
The dispirited lesbian posted.
She goes on to explain that she had also discovered Judith was also cheating on her German husband with a supervisor at her workplace.
 

World Cup-winning coach Marcello Lippi was named China’s new boss on Saturday at a time when the country’s ambitions to become a footballing powerhouse have rarely looked more remote.
The appointment of the Italian — one of the world’s most decorated football coaches — comes with China all but out of contention for the 2018 World Cup in Russia following embarrassing qualification losses to Syria and Uzbekistan.
The 68-year-old Lippi, who steered Chinese top-flight side Guangzhou Evergrande to three consecutive domestic league titles from 2012, takes over following the resignation of Gao Hongbo.
“I am proud to announce the start of a new adventure as coach of the Chinese national team,” Lippi tweeted, having travelled to Beijing to accept an official offer for the post.
The Chinese Football Association (CFA) swooped for Lippi after “friendly consultations on both sides”, it said in a statement, without giving details of the wily tactician’s contract.
The CFA said it will hold a press conference on Friday.
The capture of Lippi is a coup for the Chinese, after Gao resigned on October 11 following a 2-0 defeat to Uzbekistan, leaving China with almost no chance of making it to Russia.
Lippi, who masterminded Italy to their most recent World Cup triumph in 2006, boasts a bulging CV that included monumental success at Juventus over a nine-year period that was interrupted by a comparatively disastrous season at Inter Milan in 1999-2000.
But the silver-haired, straight-talking Tuscan will have his work cut out taking on his latest assignment.
China, the most populous nation on Earth, languish a lowly 84th in the FIFA world rankings — sandwiched between Kenya and Guatemala (population 15 million).
They have claimed just one point from four games in the latest World Cup qualification phase and are bottom in Group A, which includes Iran, Uzbekistan, South Korea, Syria and Qatar.
Often a source of national embarrassment, improving the level of football at club and national level has been one of the priorities of China’s President Xi Jinping, a known football fanatic.
Even before taking office, Xi underlined his ambitions for Chinese football: to qualify for the World Cup, to host the event and to one day win it.
China have qualified only once for the World Cup, quietly departing the 2002 edition without even scoring a goal.
Last year officials declared football a compulsory part of the national curriculum, with pledges to open 20,000 football-themed schools by 2017 with the aim of producing more than 100,000 players.
Vast sums of money have been pumped into China’s domestic clubs, even luring international stars away from the English Premier League.
There has also been a splurge of Chinese investment in some of Europe’s top clubs — Inter Milan, Manchester City, Aston Villa, Espanyol and Atletico Madrid to name but a few.

An Iraqi cameraman was killed on Saturday covering a military offensive to wrest the city of Mosul back from the Islamic State group, his channel said.
The young reporter was killed “covering the battle” near the village of Al-Shura, south of Mosul, Al Sumaria TV said in a short news flash on its website.
The channel named him as Ali Raysan.
Iraqi federal and allied paramilitary forces were working their way up the Tigris Valley south of Mosul on Saturday, the sixth day of the offensive on Mosul.
The huge operation launched on Monday, Iraq’s largest in years, involves tens of thousands of forces and is expected to last weeks.
An Iraqi TV journalist was shot dead by an IS sniper on Friday in the city of Kirkuk, where clashes are still ongoing a day after dozens of jihadist gunmen launched a spectacular raid.

So the Republican candidate shocked the nation by saying he might not recognize the results of the presidential election if he loses? Ivanka, the model-turned-business-executive, insists “he’ll accept the outcome either way.”
So Donald Trump is caught bragging in lewd terms that he can do whatever he wants to women, then insists this was only “locker-room talk”? His daughter calls the comments “inappropriate and offensive” and admits that her father’s words can be “uncomfortable for us.”
Ivanka, soon to turn 35, is still clearly her father’s protegee. He has been unstinting in his praise for his glamorous offspring, a graduate of the prestigious Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Trump counts on her to attract young and female voters.
In introducing her father at the Republican convention in July, Ivanka bragged about his “strength” and his “kindness and compassion.”
But she also knows when to step back.
Having grown up in the spotlight from an early age, at a time when her father’s extramarital affairs filled the tabloid press, Ivanka knows how to tend to her own image — and that of the clothing line that bears her name.
Her Twitter and Instagram accounts help nourish her brand, celebrating women who juggle family life and work — with impeccable style — as does a book she plans to publish next year.
They portray an ideal family: her husband Jared Kushner, her “biggest fan,” for whom she converted to Judaism, and their three children, aged five, three and six months.
She has drawn on her family experiences to distinguish herself during the campaign, quietly urging her father to make promises far removed from Republican orthodoxy, such as a call for six weeks of paid maternity leave and for childcare tax deductions.
Beyond that, Ivanka insists, she does not delve deeply into politics, unlike her brothers and husband. “I am not the campaign mastermind, as people love to portray and speculate,” she recently told MSNBC television.
But if she has edged away from her father at times in an effort to “salvage her brand,” as The New Yorker magazine has suggested, the balancing act has not been easy.
“Her quest to float along empowered but unsullied beside her father throughout this increasingly ugly campaign has been getting harder and harder,” it added.
Her reserve, in any case, has earned her a certain degree of respect in the opposing camp.
When, at the end of their second televised debate on October 9, the moderator pressed Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to cite at least one quality in their opponent, Clinton said, without hesitation: “His children are incredibly devoted and able.”
It was an indirect homage to Ivanka, who is a long-standing friend of Chelsea Clinton, the candidate’s daughter.
Even the caustic and strongly left-leaning film director Michael Moore, who just released a film strongly supportive of Clinton, seems to appreciate the young Trump. In an open letter posted on his website, he describes her as a “brilliant” and “very smart and together woman” — the only person capable, he said, of intervening to stop her father’s quixotic campaign.
For Sam Abrams, a political scientist at Sarah Lawrence College and the conservative Hoover Institution, “When you listen to her… she’s not engaged in the mud-slinging the way the others are; she is trying to be more professional, more mature.”
By taking some distance from her father’s positions, she has given herself “quite a few options” for the future, he said.
That future could be in television — she worked on her father’s reality television program “The Apprentice” — or in politics, where Abrams said she could represent values her father could not.
“The question is, what does she want to do? Can she separate herself more from her father? Can she do it on her own? Does she want to?” the analyst said.
If Donald Trump loses in November as badly as some polls predict, Abrams added, the Republican Party may be in for a prolonged period of self-examination over “what it is and what it stands for.”
So “there is no rush,” he said. “Hillary is the living proof that you can be at it for years.”

Toxic fumes released when jihadists torched a sulphur plant near Mosul earlier this week have killed two Iraqi civilians and forced US troops at a nearby base to wear masks.
“Daesh blew up the sulphur plant two days ago and that has led to the deaths of two people among the civilians in nearby villages,” Iraqi General Qusay Hamid Kadhem told AFP, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group (IS).
The senior officer of the interior ministry’s elite rapid response force said “many others were injured as a result of the toxic smoke.”
According to several security and health sources in the area, where tens of thousands of Iraqi forces are involved in a massive offensive to wrest Mosul back from IS, the group torched at least part of the Mishraq sulphur factory on Wednesday.
The blast released toxic fumes that were seen and felt by residents in the area and, early on Saturday, by forces and reporters around Qayyarah, one of the main staging bases of the anti-IS operation south of Mosul.
Kadhem admitted that the toxic fumes were having an impact on operations: “Of course, this is affecting our planned progress.”
A US official in Baghdad told reporters that US forces stationed at the main staging base of Qayyarah, south of Mosul, had taken out their gas masks as a precaution.
“There is a sulphur plant near Q-West,” the military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
IS militants “found a storage pile of sulphur” and set it on fire, he said. “This caused a very large smoke plume.”
The official explained that the wind had recently turned and started blowing the toxic cloud towards Qayyarah.
“There are people who have chosen to wear their protective gear,” he said, playing down the risk and stressing that only basic protective equipment was being used.
“Nobody is hurt at this point,” he added, referring to US personnel on the base.
He said samples were being sent to a lab and added that ongoing Iraqi efforts to put out the fire at the Mishraq plant were estimated to take another two to three days.

Mugo Wa Wairimu was a subject of harsh social media criticisms in January 2015 after he posted a photo of him and his underage daughter at a bar.
The quack had a glass of liquor in front of him as he posed for a photo while carrying her innocent daughter.
 
It turns out the child Mugo posed with at a drinking den isn’t the only daughter he has. The fake doctor also has a teenage daughter studying at the University of Nairobi.
Mugo shared first ever photos of his daughter as he hoped to be reunited with her. (The fake doctor is locked at the Industrial Area Remand Prison).
” Mugo posted on Facebook.

From living in gold decked house to spraying cash in public… Most people can only dream of the kind of lifestyles the rich kids of Nigeria live.  And the fact that Huddah Monroe’s expensive lifestyle has being recognized by Daily Mail is reason enough to make Vera Sidika get worried.
The leading UK publication wrote an article on October 20 2016 that highlighted the exorbitant lifestyle that rich kids of Nigeria lead.
Popular Nigerian heavyweights like Davido and billionaire Emeka Okonkwo popularly known as E-Money, were among those that Daily Mail shed light on.
 
Interestingly, Vera Sidika’s archenemy was also featured in the list of the rich kids of Nigeria despite being a Kenyan.
It’s not clear whether the British news outlet didn’t know Huddah Monroe wasn’t Nigerian or they just decided to add her to their list because of her unending trips to the West African nation.
Even more surprising, Daily Mail referred Huddah Monroe as a beauty entrepreneur rather than a socialite; a profession which earned her fame and money.
 
 
 

West Indies lost two late wickets to hand the initiative to Pakistan on the second day of the second Test in Abu Dhabi on Saturday.
West Indies had defied Pakistan’s bowlers well until the 44th over with the score 106 for 2, but they then lost Marlon Samuels (30) and Kraigg Brathwaite (21) in the space of three balls without adding any further runs.
Nightwatchman Devendra Bishoo and Jermaine Blackwood were yet to score as West Indies trail Pakistan’s first innings total of 452 by 346 runs with six wickets intact.
Darren Bravo, who made 87 and 116 in the first Test in Dubai, made an attractive 43 but his dismissal left Pakistan in a dominant position.
A late collapse hit the West Indies hard as Samuels edged fast bowler Rahat Ali to slip before Brathwaite was run out by Misbah-ul-Haq’s throw after setting off for a quick single.
Bravo, who opened the innings after Brathwaite was off the field when Pakistan were batting and could not come in at the start, helped the tourists reach 27 without loss at the tea interval.
But in the third over after tea Rahat gave Pakistan the breakthrough when he trapped Leon Johnson leg-before for 12.
Bravo and Brathwaite took the score to 65 before drama unfolded involving English umpire Michael Gough as two of his decisions were overturned on referral.
Leg-spinner Yasir Shah struck Bravo on his back pad as the left-hander tried to pull a short ball but Gough turned down a vociferous appeal from Pakistan players.
Misbah reviewed the decision and television replays showed Bravo was leg-before for 43.
The very next ball Shah trapped Samuels in front of his stumps and Gough raised his finger, only for a review to grant the batsman a reprieve as replays showed he had hit the ball.
Earlier, Pakistan skipper Misbah missed out on his 11th Test century by just four runs, but Sarfraz Ahmed (56) and Mohammad Nawaz (25) added 70 for the seventh wicket to ensure Pakistan crossed the 450-mark.
Shannon Gabriel, who took a career best five for 96, had dismissed Misbah in the first session before bowling Ahmed soon after lunch.
He dismissed Zulfiqar Babar for nought to wrap up the innings.
Sohail Khan hit five boundaries before he became one of three victims for Jason Holder, who finished with 3-47.
Pakistan had resumed the day on 304-4 in the hope that Misbah and nightwatchman Shah would survive the second new ball which the West Indies took at the start of play.
Shah was fortunate to escape a leg-before review off Holder but Misbah was not so lucky as he was dismissed in the next over.
Misbah missed an inswinging delivery which hit him in front of the stumps, with umpire Gough raising his finger. The Pakistani skipper reluctantly reviewed the decision but without success.
Shah was the next to go as he pulled Holder straight to square-leg fielder Bishoo after scoring 23.
Ahmed paced his innings well, hitting six boundaries in his 59-ball knock, taking Pakistan past the 400 mark.
Pakistan lead the three-match series 1-0 after winning the first Test — a day-night affair played with a pink ball — by 56 runs.

The German started 2016 by lifting the Australian Open trophy, her first major title, but said she initially struggled with her new level of success, making an early exit at France’s Roland Garros.
“(The French Open) was the first Grand Slam after my biggest victory and I was not able to deal with the pressure and everything,” she told reporters Saturday. “But I learn a lot, especially (from) the loss in Paris.”
She found her second wind later in 2016, reaching the Wimbledon finals and the Rio Olympics before the 28-year-old produced her best performance to date, winning the US Open and capturing the number one ranking.
Powerhouse Serena Williams, the only player with the chance of overtaking Kerber for the top spot, last week pulled out of the elite eight-player tournament in Singapore with a shoulder injury.
Williams’ absence has levelled the playing field and, with most players exhausted after a long season, Kerber fancies her chances of winning the Billie Jean King trophy for the first time.
She begins her campaign on Sunday against Slovakia’s Dominika Cibulkova, in the first of three round robin matches each qualifier is guaranteed.
“This tournament in my opinion is open. In tennis now I think the level is similar, so everyone can win it,” said third seed Simona Halep, who faces American Madison Keys in the opening match of the tournament.
Another player battling injuries and fatigue is French Open winner Garbine Muguruza, who pulled out of a recent tournament in Linz after spraining her ankle.
“(Last year) I ended up exhausted and I was playing singles and doubles,” the Spaniard said.
“I think this year is going to be good for me to concentrate only in singles and just try to win all the round robin matches I can to feel good,” she said.
Muguruza plays her first match on Monday against Czech Karolina Pliskova, while the defending champion Agnieszka Radwanska takes on either Johanna Konta or Svetlana Kuznetsova.

Turkey hit Kurdish militia targets in northern Syria for the second time in less than 72 hours, the military said Saturday, as Ankara vowed further action.
Rockets struck 70 People’s Protection Units (YPG) targets Friday, the Turkish armed forces said in a statement that did not reveal whether any militia fighters had been killed.
The strikes came after two Ankara-backed Syrian opposition fighters were injured when YPG forces opened fire south of the flashpoint town of Jarabulus, the military said, quoted in the official Anadolu news agency.
Turkey views Syria’s YPG and Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) as terror groups linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), staging an insurgency in Turkey since 1984.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu threatened further action against the YPG and PYD, saying that if they “continued to attack (Syrian opposition fighters) fighting against Daesh”, the Islamic State group, Turkey would “do what is necessary”.
Quoted by Anadolu, the minister again accused the YPG of seeking to create its own larger “canton” rather than focusing on the fight against IS, pointing to “attacks on moderate opposition” as evidence of this.
The PKK is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the United States and European Union.
Late Wednesday, Turkish jets struck YPG positions and the armed forces claimed they killed up to 200 fighters from the group, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the toll lower.
The monitor said at least 11 fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) — a US-backed alliance of about 30,000 Kurdish and Arab fighters — were killed and 24 wounded.
Turkey has clashed with the United States over the YPG, with the Americans’ support to the Syrian Kurdish militia causing friction between the two NATO allies.
Despite Ankara’s protests, Washington believes the YPG is the most effective fighting force against IS in Syria.
Turkey’s Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Friday the US was making a mistake supporting the Syrian Kurdish fighters.
“Unfortunately their use by the United States against Daesh (IS) and being supplied with arms is a big mistake. We have made it clear to them,” he said.
On August 24 Ankara launched an operation in northern Syria to remove IS from its border and stop the YPG’s westward advance.
Turkey has sent dozens of tanks and hundreds of troops into Syria to support rebels seeking President Bashar al-Assad’s ouster, and the army says 1,265 square kilometres (488 square miles) have been secured since August.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that Turkish-backed rebels would next advance on Al-Bab after having recaptured from IS Jarabulus and Al-Rai in the early days of the operation.
“We have to prepare a terror-free zone,” he said during a televised speech from Bursa, northwestern Turkey.
He reiterated Turkey’s position that it would not work with the YPG in any US-led coalition operation to expel IS from its de facto capital, Raqa.
Last Sunday, Ankara-backed rebels seized the emblematic northern town of Dabiq from the extremist group, having already taken Al-Rai as well.
Erdogan again voiced his opposition to the creation of a “terror corridor” — referring to the joining of the Kurdish “cantons” of Afrin and Kobane.
Separately the Turkish military said it hit 52 IS targets in northern Syria, while the Dogan news agency said seven Ankara-backed rebels were killed in clashes with the jihadist group.

Anne Ngugi was the face of KTN Swahili 7 o’clock news until she moved to K24 to replicate what she was doing at the Mombasa Road-based TV station.
The former TV girl was among several other employees that were laid off when Media Max carried out a major shake-up.
 
In an interview with the Nairobian, Anne revealed K24 fired her when she was heavily pregnant with twins.
Anne revealed.
She explained finding another job was a mountain to climb since no one wanted to hire her. The ex K24 anchor attributed her predicament to her husband’s case in court.
Anne’s husband, Hypolite Nyongbia, was accused of swindling Kes 6.4 Million from two Korean and a Nigerian national.
 
She was also implicated in the scandal and that explains why employers were reluctant to hire her in their organizations.
Anne managed to secure a job with Africa News channel as a correspondent. From a news anchor to a correspondent sure that’s a step backward.

It was hardly vintage All Blacks and the tense game at Eden Park wasn’t settled until Savea’s game-breaking effort in the second half, scoring two tries and setting up a third.
But the ultimately convincing win rewrites the record books for Steve Hansen’s side, who surpass the top-tier record winning streak of 17 set by the All Blacks of 1965-1969 and matched twice since.
The All Blacks hit the front in the fifth minute when Israel Dagg scored and they never surrendered the lead, but for long periods Australia dictated terms and only stout defence earned the All Blacks their place in history.
They were only ahead 15-10 — after Australia had had a try disallowed by the TV match official — and defending constantly with 25 minutes to play when Savea burst into life.
There were questions ahead of the game whether the Wallabies would prove giantkillers, having stymied the All Blacks three times in recent years when the record was on the cards.
But Bernard Foley missed two close-range penalties and a Henry Speight try was disallowed when the TV official judged that Dane Haylett-Petty blocked Savea as he chased Speight.
For all their attacking flaws, sloppy discipline and rushed decision-making, the All Blacks scored six tries with Dagg, Anton Lienert-Brown, TJ Perenara, Savea (twice) and Dane Coles all crossing the line.
Aaron Cruden, brought off the bench early in the second half after Beauden Barrett missed the first three conversions, added seven points with the boot.
Rory Arnold scored Australia’s only try with Foley adding a conversion and penalty.
The Test record caps a remarkable 12 months in which the All Blacks became the first team to successfully defend the World Cup, retained the trans-Tasman Bledisloe Cup for a 14th consecutive year and won the Rugby Championship for the fourth time in five years.
Since Hansen took over as head coach after the All Blacks won the 2011 World Cup, the side has lost only three of 64 matches.
The Wallabies had the first opportunity to score only for Foley to hook a 33-metre penalty and the All Blacks responded immediately, exposing the Wallaby centres with two smart tries.
Ben Smith ran around Reece Hodge to put Dagg over wide out for the first touchdown and four minutes later Lienert-Brown, taking a short pass from Ryan Crotty, zipped past Samu Kerevi for the second.
For 15 minutes through the middle of the first half the Wallabies enjoyed a measure of control and they eventually broke the All Blacks defence when Arnold used all of his 2.08 metres (6ft 9in) to stretch out and score in the 28th minute.
They had a chance to turn it into a 10-point try, as Kieran Read was penalised in a confrontation on the line, but Hodge was astray with his long-range attempt at the restart.
The All Blacks struck back immediately with scrum-half Perenara charging down a Hodge clearing kick, regathering the ball and running in the All Blacks’ third try.
Foley landed a penalty early in the second half and Australia continued to keep pressure on the All Blacks until Smith broke out from his own 22 and set up Savea’s first try.
The big wing smashed through Speight and Nick Frisby for his second and then sent Coles over to settle the outcome.

Larry requested Malik for an interview when POTUS visited Kenya to attend 2015 Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) only to be surprised by Malik’s outrageous demands.
President Obama’s step-brother demanded to be given Kes 50,000 to be interviewed by NTV. And when Larry declined to meet his demands, Malik rushed to social media to spew gibberish remarks.

Malik/Larry’s beef was reignited by recent development in America’s politics; President Obama’s step-brother has openly endorsed Donald Trump for President.
 
 
Malik has been tarnishing the name of America’s President while being interviewed by various news outlets. He says his decision to support Trump was because President Obama had ‘neglected’ him.
Malik’s campaign to taint President Obama’s name was the reason why Larry came forth to reveal his ugly secrets.
The NTV anchor says Malik made a killing selling President Obama’s personal letters. He goes on to reveal that Malik didn’t even use the name “Obama” until recently when Barack Obama was elected President of US.
Wrote Larry Madowo.
Interestingly, both Larry and Malik hail from the same County of Siaya; their home villages are close by.
 
 

Zamalek of Egypt can draw comfort from the past as they seek to overturn a 3-0 deficit on Sunday in the second leg of the CAF Champions League final against Mamelodi Sundowns.
Canon Yaounde (Cameroon), Mouloudia Alger (Algeria) and Asante Kotoko (Ghana) faced similar dire circumstances to the Cairo club in previous finals and only the latter did not finish overall winners.
Another morale boost for the “White Knights” ahead of the return match at the 86,000-seat Borg El Arab stadium in Alexandria is that no South African club has beaten Egyptian rivals in a final.
Sundowns fell to Al Ahly in their only previous appearance 15 years ago and the same Cairo club defeated Orlando Pirates in the 2013 final.
But Sundowns have had the measure of Zamalek this season, also beating them 1-0 at home and 2-1 away during the group phase.
“We need a miracle to win the trophy,” admitted coach Moamen Soliman this week after watching his mix of Egyptian and Nigerian stars outplayed in Pretoria last weekend.
“But we won by four goals at home to Wydad Casablanca in the semi-finals and lost by three goals in Morocco so nothing is impossible.
“Sundowns have fantastic players who are strong and fast. We have to be stronger and faster than them.
“We have to give everything, attack relentlessly and not think too much about Sundowns.”
Outspoken Zamalek club chairman Mortada Mansour expects much more from his team in a return match expected to be watched by a crowd restricted to 40,000 for security reasons.
“Some of our players in Pretoria did not deserve to wear the Zamalek shirt. I will not name them — they know who they are,” said he thundered.
Goalkeeper Ahmed El Shenawy and veteran midfielder Shikabala — real name Mahmoud Abdel Razek Fadlallah — have unhappy first-leg memories.
El Shenawy allowed a Tebogo Langerman cross to dip behind him into the net for the second Sundowns goal.
And captain Shikabala was largely anonymous on the left flank until replaced 10 minutes into the second half with Zamalek three goals behind.
Should Soliman axe El Shenawy, Mahmoud “Genesh” Abdel Rahim will start and the coach hopes long-term casualty Ali Fathy is fit to fill the troublesome left-back position.
With $1.5 million (1.38 million euros) and a place at the FIFA Club World Cup in Japan going to the overall winners, Sundowns coach Pitso Mosimane is taking nothing for granted.
The South Africans complained to the competition organisers soon after arriving in Egypt when a request for a change of training venue was rejected.
“There will be hostility from Zamalek supporters, but we are ready for anything,” said the former striker hoping to become the first South African coach of a Champions League-winning side.
“A lot of people say Sundowns have already won the trophy but we have to remember that our opponents scored four goals at home in the semi-finals.
“It would be foolish to consider ourselves champions ahead of the return match. We do have an advantage, but there is a big hurdle to clear on Sunday night.
“We know Zamalek will attack from the kick-off, but that will create opportunities for us to catch them on the break with our speed.”
Mosimane must make at least one change to the first-leg starting side with Ivorian colossus Bangaly Soumahoro set to replace suspended centre-back Wayne Arendse.
Sundowns hope to become the first club eliminated during a CAF club competition to win it.
After beating the South Africans in a qualifier, V Club of the Democratic Republic of Congo were banned, allowing their opponents back in.
When then Libyan strongman Moamer Kadhafi barred Al Ahly Tripoli from playing an Egyptian club in the 1984 African Cup Winners Cup final for political reasons, beaten semi-finalists Canon Yaounde got a second chance — which they failed to take.

Ben Stokes gave England a firm grip on the first Test with bat and ball before Shakib Al Hasan’s 5-79 revived Bangladesh hopes in Chittagong on Saturday.
Stokes hit 85 runs in the second innings to steer England to 228-8 at stumps on the third day after his three-wicket burst earlier in the morning helped them dismiss Bangladesh for 248 runs.
The visitors now lead their hosts by 273 runs, which could be handy on a pitch that offered spinners plenty of turn, making life difficult for batsmen from both sides.
Stokes appeared to have mastered the wicket with his feisty innings, which came off 151 balls with six fours and three sixes.
Jonny Bairstow gave him a good company as the duo shared 127 for the sixth wicket to bail out England from a precarious 62-5 in the second innings.
Bairstow missed out on a very deserving half-century, leaving the pitch for 47 after he was played on by Kamrul Islam, the bowler’s maiden Test wicket and only wicket so far taken by a Bangladeshi seamer in the match.
Shakib soon trapped Stokes in front to end an highly impressive innings before he completed his 15th five-wicket haul with the scalp of Adil Rashid.
Chris Woakes (11 not out) and Stuart Broad (10 not out) remained at the crease overnight hoping to extend England’s advantage before they set the fourth innings target for Bangladesh.
“If we can get up to 320 it will be nice,” Stokes said after the match.
“(Stuart) Broad has got a Test hundred while Woakes had got nine to 10 first class centuries, so there is no reason why these two cannot get another 50 for us,” he added.
Bangladesh’s pace bowling coach Courtney Walsh believes the game is still open.
“Probably, England got about 20-30 runs more than what we would have liked, at this stage. I think the bowlers fought very well today.”
“For me the game is still in the balance. We have to bat well second time around,” he said.
Shakib led Bangladesh’s fight back before the lunch break leaving England at 28-3 after the visitors took a 45-run lead in the first innings.
England’s hopes of building a sizeable advantage were dealt a blow when debutant spinner Mehedi Hasan induced an edge from captain Alastair Cook to send him back for 12.
Shakib trapped Joe Root lbw for one in the next over to take his 150th Test wicket before he had Ben Duckett caught by Mominul Haque at forward short leg for 15.
Gary Ballance fell to Taijul Islam for nine after the break before Shakib grabbed his third wicket by dismissing Moeen Ali for 14.
It was a comeback for the Bangladesh all-rounder, who put his team in trouble by throwing his wicket off the second ball of the morning.
Resuming on 221-5, Bangladesh were hoping Shakib, who was unbeaten on 31 overnight, would take them close to England’s first innings total.
But he went down the wicket before the dust had settled and paid the price as Bairstow completed a simple stumping.
Rashid removed nightwatchman Shafiul Islam for two as Stuart Broad took the catch high on his head at midwicket.
Stokes, who finished with 4-26, had Mehedi lbw for one in the next over before a low catch at slip by Cook ended Sabbir Rahman’s effort at 19.
He bowled third debutant Kamrul Islam in the same over to wrap up Bangladesh’s innings as the hosts added just 27 runs to their overnight score for the loss of five wickets in 12 overs.

Janet Mbugua’s son will be turning one on Wednesday October 26; but things have not been easy for the Citizen TV’s anchor for the last 11 months since her baby Ethan was born.
 
Janet has had her equal share of drama with the nannies she employed to watch over her son. In a lengthy Facebook post, Mama Ethan narrated how she was forced to fire three househelps  after discovering they posed risk to her son’s wellbeing.
She says nightmare in her house began when her competent nanny got pregnant; she had to let her loose and employed another nanny to take care of baby Ethan.
 
But the new domestic worker turned out to have unpredictable personality; Janet suspected she could be bi-polar.
 Janet Wrote in part.
She goes on to reveal that she employed another nanny but fired her after just 4 days when she discovered she was taking selfies with Baby Ethan.
After firing the ‘selfie nanny’, Janet employed another domestic worker whom she says was always destructed by her phone. The maid fired herself before Mama Ethan could show her the door.
The Citizen TV anchor summarized her nanny tale by revealing her competent maid returned to take care for her son after she gave birth.
“

Security forces battled for a second day Saturday with Islamic State group gunmen who infiltrated Kirkuk in a brazen raid that rattled Iraq as it ramped up an offensive to retake Mosul.
A toxic cloud released by a fire IS militants started at a sulphur plant south of Mosul earlier this week killed at least two civilians and forced some US service members to wear masks.
A day after the shock attack on the Kurdish-controlled city of Kirkuk, jihadist snipers and suspected suicide bombers were still at large, prompting Baghdad to send reinforcements.
Special counter-terrorism and intelligence units were hunting down some of the dozens of IS fighters who stormed public buildings early on Friday.
“We have 46 dead and 133 wounded, most of them members of the security services, as result of the clashes with Daesh (IS),” an interior ministry brigadier general told AFP.
The toll was confirmed by a source at the Kirkuk health directorate, which called for blood donations to assist with the emergency.
The Kirkuk police chief said 48 jihadist attackers had been killed so far and several others wounded, including a Libyan believed to be among the raid’s leaders.
“The security forces control the situation now but there are still pockets of jihadists in some southern and eastern neighbourhoods,” Brigadier General Khattab Omar Aref told AFP.
The large-scale “inghimasi” attack, a term for jihadist operations in which gunmen, often wearing suicide vests, intend to sow chaos and fight to the death rather than achieve any military goal, caught Kirkuk off guard.
The large city, which lies in an oil-producing region around 240 kilometres (150 miles) north of Baghdad, woke up on Friday to find jihadists roaming the streets of several neighbourhoods.
They used mosque loudspeakers to broadcast praise of their self-proclaimed “caliphate”, which has been shrinking steadily since last year and is looking closer than ever to collapse.
Abu Omar, a 40-year-old butcher, spent 24 hours locked up in his home with his wife, mother and three children.
“It felt as if this day lasted a year,” he said. “We could hear shooting and explosions all the time but we didn’t dare venture outside to see what was happening.”
Clashes broke in the countryside just east of Kirkuk between IS fighters fleeing the city and security forces, a senior regional security official said.
The attack, which is believed to have been carried out both by sleeper cells and militants who entered the city on Friday, was widely seen as an attempt by IS to draw attention away from their setbacks in the battle for Mosul.
Pentagon chief Ashton Carter arrived in Iraq Saturday to review the offensive, which his country and around 60 other nations support.
Mosul is the most populous city in the “caliphate” Baghdadi declared in June 2014, and the operation to recapture it is Iraq’s largest in years.
With 3,000 to 4,500 IS men facing tens of thousands of Iraqi forces backed by massive US-led air power, the outcome of the battle is in little doubt.
But jihadists have been launching dozens of suicide car bombs against advancing forces, inflicting casualties and slowing their progress.
On Saturday, Iraqi federal forces moved into Qaraqosh, which lies just east of Mosul and was Iraq’s largest Christian town before its population fled the jihadists in 2014, the joint operations command said.
Kurdish forces were also leading a major push northeast of Mosul, but complained that air support from the US-led coalition was insufficient and leaving them exposed.
In his meetings in Baghdad on Saturday, the US defence secretary had been expected to attempt to convince the government to lift its opposition to the participation of Turkish forces, who have a base north of Mosul.
But Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi reiterated his rejection of Turkish participation in the offensive, saying that “this is something the Iraqis will handle”.
Launched on Monday, the offensive is still in its early stages and is likely to involve a siege before elite forces enter the city and engage in street fighting with die-hard jihadists.
A key concern is the presence in Mosul of up to 1.2 million civilians, who are trapped and unable to leave until forces move closer and safe corridors are opened.
According to residents contacted by AFP, living conditions are deteriorating daily, with some food supplies running low and IS paranoia of informants greater than ever.
Earlier this week, IS fighters set part of a sulphur plant south of Mosul ablaze.
The toxic cloud it released killed two civilians in the area, a senior interior ministry officer told AFP in Qayyarah, the main staging base south of Mosul.
“Of course, this is affecting our planned progress,” he said.
The local health centre said it had checked 500 people complaining of breathing problems.
Some US personnel at a nearby base wore protective masks Saturday after changing winds blew the cloud towards Qayyarah.
Iraqi officials said the fire at the Mishraq plant was extinguished later Saturday.
An Iraqi cameraman was killed by an IS sniper south of Mosul Saturday, a day after another TV journalist died of a sniper bullet to the chest during the Kirkuk clashes.

That’s the status the Golden State Warriors have created for themselves after the off-season signing of former Oklahoma City star Durant, a four-time NBA scoring champion, to a two-year deal worth $54.3 million.
“It’s new and fresh. I’m looking forward to it,” Durant said of joining the Warriors. “I’m super excited.”
After the Warriors lost last year’s NBA Finals to Cleveland in seven games, they toughened their lineup by adding the 2014 NBA Most Valuable Player to a roster featuring 2015 and 2016 MVP Stephen Curry and 3-point sharpshooter Klay Thompson in the backcourt plus standouts Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala up front.
“The stakes will be a lot higher this year than they were last year just because of adding Kevin,” Warriors guard Shaun Livingston said.
The Warriors set an NBA record by going 73-9 in the regular season and grabbed a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven championship series only to be foiled when LeBron James sparked the greatest comeback in NBA Finals history.
“I don’t want to walk in the door thinking about game seven,” Curry said. “But you should remember how you felt walking off the floor. You should remember all you did all summer to get yourself in a better position individually and collectively.”
NBA general managers said in a poll they expect Golden State to face the Cavaliers in the finals for a third consecutive season next June, in what would be the decider in a heavyweight trilogy.
“There’s no more pressure on us than there was last year,” Curry said of bouncing back from the upset to defending a crown.
The Warriors dumped a fistful of reserves and traded Australian center Andrew Bogut to Dallas to make salary room for Durant, who reached the Western Conference final four times in six years but has yet to win a title.
“We just try to get better,” Warriors general manager Bob Myers said. “You never expect to get this much better.”
Warriors coach Steve Kerr has four All-Star starters and was watched Durant score 19.7 points, 4.8 rebounds and 3.3 assists a game in the pre-season with Curry averaging 17.2 points, 4.2 assists, 4.0 rebounds and 2.3 steals.
“You can’t do any better than adding KD to the current crew,” Kerr said. “To play with them and play our style, I think that was attractive to him. It does feel like it should be a perfect fit. It’s going to be a lot of fun once we get rolling.”
Thompson, Durant’s teammate on the US Olympic gold medal team in Rio, is hitting 19.5 points a game and he and Durant are each shooting about 55 percent from the floor.
“It still shocks me that he’s on our team. It’s unbelievable,” Thompson said. “For a guy who has had so much success in his career and is so young, he doesn’t walk around like he’s better than anyone else.”
Green was suspended for game five of the finals after taking a swipe at LeBron James as the Cleveland star stepped over him late in game four. While he was back for the last two contests, his absence helped the Cavaliers avoid an early ouster and planted seeds for the fightback. Green apologized to teammates but there is concern about keeping his fiery nature under proper control.
“If you try to temper him too much, are you taking away his edge?” Kerr said.

A few hours’ drive north and west from liberal Washington, Johnstown — the beating heart of Trump Country — is a world away from the US capital.
Industry in the region has been on the decline for decades. Smoke stacks from the steel plants have been quiet for years and large parts of its downtown are deserted.
There are few jobs remaining from the steel, coal and garment industries that once kept the local economy humming.
Many here say long-awaited deliverance has come in the person of Trump, the billionaire businessman who has promised to make Johnstown great again.
Trump’s campaign has stalled after lackluster performances at all three presidential debates with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
It also has been hurt because of the scandal over his alleged groping of women, and the furor over his unprecedented suggestion that he might not accept the outcome of the election.
But inhabitants of this part of Pennsylvania — including several thousand supporters who thronged the local convention center for a rally on Friday — pay little heed to predictions of the Republican candidate’s demise, lapping up his message of economic resurgence after decades of decline.
“He’s going to bring back businesses to Johnstown,” said a 66-year-old retired secretary who only gave her name as Chris.
“He’s going to get the steel mills running again,” she said.
A candidate known for his dystopian descriptions of America’s inner cities or the plight of the economy and military, Trump offers a seductively upbeat vision of how life will be after he moves into the White House.
“Your jobs will come back under a Trump administration. That I can tell you — including your steel, which has been decimated in this area,” he promised his ardent supporters at the rally.
“Your incomes will go up under a Trump administration, your taxes will go way, way down,” he said to applause and cheers.
“We will bring prosperity back to Johnstown. We will be putting your miners back to work… all across this city and country.”
That message resonates with Chris, who remembers what life was like when Johnstown was still an industrial mecca, before being forsaken by its business leaders and politicians.
“Main Street was crowded with people. It was booming,” she recalled.
“Right now, we have three or four restaurants and a Dollar Store. That’s it,” she said.
Walt Rozum, 84, a lifelong Democrat who worked for 30 years at Bethlehem Steel, said Trump’s message was persuasive enough to convince him to cross parties and vote for the Republican nominee.
“I think he’s going to do real well around here. I would say from what I see of it, it’s Trump Country. All along the highways, there are very few signs for Hillary,” he said.
“Trump puts his foot in his mouth every time he opens it, but people want a change,” Rozum said.
Trump rallies have become infamous for their anger and outbursts of violence — but the crowd in Johnstown was more remarkable for its ardor.
“We love you Trump!” one adoring supporter shouted during the speech, as the candidate assured Johnstown that he will restore the city to its former glory.
Trump said new jobs will be created by commissioning new weaponry for the military, and rebuilding the region’s bridges and aging roads, promising ripple effects to be felt clear across the Pennsylvania economy.
“Our politicians failed you, and betrayed you,” he said.
“They gave your jobs to foreign companies and producers… We got the poverty. They got the factories, the jobs and the wealth.”

American Ashley Wagner, runner-up at this year’s World Championships, won the women’s short program Friday at Skate 1America, the opening event of the ISU Grand Prix figure skating season.
Wagner won with 69.50 points while Japan’s Mai Mihara was second on 65.75 and American Gracie Gold, the reigning US women’s champion and a Chicago hometown favorite, took third with 64.87 points.
Gold led the women’s world championships after the short program but a poor long program saw her fall to a fourth-place finish.
Canada’s Gabrielle Daleman was fourth on 64.49 with Japan’s Mao Asada, a three-time world champion and 2010 Olympic runner-up, fifth on 64.47.
In the pairs short program, Russia’s Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov, the fifth-place duo at the world championships, won with 75.24 points.
Americans Haven Denney and Brandon Frazier were second on 67.29, while Canada’s Julianne Seguin and Charlie Bilodeau, who won gold at the Autumn Classic in Montreal, third on 66.49.
The Skate America women’s and pairs crowns will be decided in Saturday’s free skate finals.

A painstaking restoration of a 15th-century Flemish masterpiece is revealing the long-lost detail and splendour that helped make the altarpiece one of the world’s most stolen artworks.
“The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb” by the Van Eyck brothers was unveiled 600 years ago at Saint Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent, but since then its full glory has dimmed, after being split into pieces, seized by Napoleon, then the Nazis, and nabbed by thieves.
“You could say it is like the rediscovery of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel after its restoration,” Marie Postec of Belgium’s Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage told AFP.
“The original was hidden by layers of dirt and alterations, the colours had completely faded. Today, the same thing is happening here, and we have the chance to witness its rebirth,” Postec said.
The giant altarpiece, which measures 4.4 metres by 3.4 metres (15 feet by 10 feet), is attributed to Hubert Van Eyck and his better-known brother Jan, and was completed in 1432 when Ghent in modern-day northern Belgium was the wealthy powerhouse of the European wool cloth trade.
The “Mystic Lamb” depicted on the lower central internal panel represents Jesus, and also refers to the emblem of the wool merchants guild which played a hugely important role in the city.
Returning a restored “Mystic Lamb” to St Bavo’s Cathedral is nearly the end of the story but there is — literally — one piece still missing.
In 1934, thieves stole two of the work’s 12 panels. One was recovered but the other, that of “The Just Judges”, remains unaccounted for to this day.
That capped an incredible history of upheaval for the artwork that began in the Reformation, when it was hauled up the cathedral tower to protect it from attacking Protestants.
Two centuries later, panels that had been seized by the French were returned to the church by the Duke of Wellington after his victory at Waterloo against Napoleon.
Then in World War II, the altarpiece was sent to the Vatican for protection but again ended up in France and was seized by the Nazis who hid the panels in an Austrian salt mine. The US army eventually saved them.
The complex work includes hinged panels that can be opened and closed to offer worshippers two very different views.
At the heart, or interior, of the work, there are three vibrant scenes, each one made up of four painted panels. The two outer scenes can be closed, meeting in the middle to cover up the central scene. On the reverse, or exterior, these panels are painted with more sombre imagery.
Begun in 2012, restoration work has so far been completed on the exterior panels, which worshippers saw most often as the altarpiece would have been kept closed, except for major holy days and festivals.
In relatively muted tones — compared with the splendour and richness of the interior — they show the Annunciation, John the Baptist, the patron saint of Ghent — and the wealthy merchant and church warden Joos Vidjt and his wife Lysbette who donated the work to the cathedral.
But even these external panels show newfound life after the removal of a yellowish sheen which had drained the colours of their vibrancy.
The painting is complex, densely detailed and full of symbols relating to passages in the Bible and daily life at a time when Ghent was ruled by the Dukes of Burgundy, whose court was among the most flamboyant and refined in late medieval Europe.
During the work, the team of 10 restorers have had to very delicately chip away, centimetre by centimetre, at layers of discoloured varnish and the “repainting” of early preservation efforts, some of which may date back to the 1500s.
“Nowadays, we would not cover over the original work but then, restorers would really have been painters themselves who would have repainted the whole thing, rather than just minutely retouch it bit by bit,” Postec said.
“Before, there was just a uniform black background but we have found space, light,” she said.
“We have also found folds (in the clothes) from the 15th century which were simply painted over and (this sort of detail) really changes how you see the picture.”
Restoration work will now begin on the internal panels at the nearby Ghent Fine Arts Museum with the aim of finishing by 2020, when there will be a celebratory year dedicated to Van Eyck paintings.
Until then, reproductions will have to suffice for the thousands of visitors who come to Ghent to see a painting many consider second only to Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” in artistic achievement and cultural importance.

“He is cuckoo,” blurted out the 32-year-old Manrikez, who works at a perfume shop just steps away from the border between Arizona and Mexico.
The Republican presidential candidate’s vow to build a “big, beautiful, powerful wall” — and force Mexico to pay for it — has been a centerpiece of his campaign.
But for many like Manrikez on the frontlines of America?s battle to curb illegal immigration, the idea elicits chuckles and is entirely implausible.
“This whole town is Mexican, all the families here are Mexican and everyone thinks he and his ideas are a joke,” she told AFP, launching into a diatribe in Spanish against the billionaire businessman.
Many residents pointed to an 18-foot (5.5-meter) metal barrier that already separates Nogales from its sister city in Mexico as an example of why Trump’s wall is unlikely to discourage migrants or drug smugglers headed to the US.
“We already have a wall here and people still manage to cross,” said Adriana Ortega, an employee at a bridal dress shop that overlooks the border. “A lot of people manage to climb over the wall within sight of border patrol agents and don’t even get caught.
“So the solution is not to build more fences, but to have more enforcement.”
The barrier in Nogales, a town of some 21,000 mainly Hispanic residents living in the US legally, cuts across the downtown area and snakes into the desert hills surrounding the city on either side.
And like other towns scattered along the almost 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) US-Mexico frontier, the economy in the American side of Nogales is deeply intertwined with that of the Mexican part of the city.
“Most of the shops here rely on customers from Mexico,” said Ortega, whose store features elaborate wedding gowns priced between $600 and $3,000. “And right now we are suffering because the economy in Mexico is down.”
A recent poll conducted by Spanish-language network Univision, the Dallas Morning News and Arizona State University’s news channel showed that the overwhelming majority of residents in communities along both sides of the US-Mexico border — 86 percent in Mexico and 72 percent in the US — are opposed to the construction of a wall between their countries.
The majority also feel the tone of the presidential campaign could hurt relations with America’s third-biggest goods trading partner.
Mexico is a key customer for the four border states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Everything from cars, computers and machinery transit the border daily, and millions of jobs on both sides depend on that relationship.
For Irwin Perez, who works at a Mexican restaurant in Nogales that is popular with locals, including border patrol agents, Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric harks back to a dark time in history.
“Even though he’s not calling for Mexicans to be put in gas chambers or labor camps, he’s still calling for families to be deported and these are people who pay taxes and have established roots in the US,” Perez said, referring to the 11 million undocumented workers, many of them Mexican, who Trump has vowed to deport.
“These people are part of the US workforce, doing jobs that Americans won’t even touch,” added Perez, 26, who was born in the US to Mexican parents. “They are fleeing persecution in their country, poverty and even a 2,000-foot wall won’t stop them.
“But sadly, Trump has already built so many walls just with his words.”
Perez, like more than a dozen residents and business people interviewed in Nogales, said he has stopped paying attention to the inflammatory campaign talk and had little faith that Trump, or for that matter his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, were committed to fixing a broken immigration system.
“I pretty much don’t listen to anything they say anymore,” said Javier Mayer, manager at a produce company that employs about 50 people, mainly Hispanics. “What Trump is proposing is logistically impossible.
“He can’t kick every Mexican out of the country.”

The Argentine has refused the traditional trappings of the papacy from the start, declining to move into the sumptuous papal apartment in the Vatican and plumping instead to live in a hotel inside the tiny city state.
Francis’s decision will allow visitors access to the bedroom where more than 15 popes have slept over the centuries, furnished with a gilded bed and two bedside tables in wood and marble.
The bed has also served another purpose — during the Second World War, when the 55-hectare (135-acre) residence was opened to refugees, some 40 children were born there.
“Here, the grand events of history mix with personal histories,” said Osvaldo Gianoli, director of the pontifical villas.
“The opening of the private apartments has a symbolic value which reflects the pastoral beliefs of Pope Francis,” Gianoli said during an inauguration ceremony on Friday.
The second-floor apartments still bear the traces of the frequent visits of Francis’s predecessor, Benedict XVI — for example 12 volumes of a German theological lexicon line the shelves of the study.
The German came to this hilltop palace, with its view over lake Albano, after his shock announcement in 2013 that he would become the first pontiff in seven centuries to resign from the role.
Saverio Petrillo — who spent 56 years in service to seven popes at the residence — recalled how John XXIII (1958-1963) would slip out without an escort and drive to neighbouring castles, on one occasion almost missing prayers.
Francis opened the estate’s gardens to the public in 2014, with tours organised for groups and by reservation only.
Since last year, tourists have also been able to climb aboard a special white train for an express trip to the lavish estate and a tour of the papal villa, including past the pope’s organic farm, which includes cows, free-range hens, cockerels and pontifical bees.
Francis’s absence from the palace is not exceptional — of the 33 popes who could have stayed there only around half have done so, according to Antonio Palucci, director of the Vatican museums. His successors will be able to return there if they wish.

More than 80 nations square off in Slovenia next week over the fate of the world’s remaining whales, facing a multitude of perils from meat hunters and ship strikes to getting snared in fishing gear.
The stage is set for heated debate, as the 88 members of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) are deeply divided along pro- and anti-hunting lines.
The biggest bones of contention are Japan’s yearly whale hunt in the name of science, which critics insist is for dinner tables instead, and a proposal for a South Atlantic sanctuary to protect the majestic marine mammals.
Hunting nations Japan, Norway and Iceland are traditionally pitted against much of the rest of the world at the biennial IWC meetings, which seek to balance issues of national sovereignty, subsistence rights and culture with conservation of Earth’s natural bounty.
For environmentalists, it is an issue of cruelty as well.
“Whaling has no place in the 21st century. It’s outdated, it’s thoroughly inhumane,” Claire Bass of Humane Society International told AFP from the Adriatic coastal town of Portoroz, where the commission’s 66th meeting will take place from Monday to Friday.
“There is no humane way to kill whales at sea,” she said, pointing out that many die long drawn-out deaths from horrific wounds inflicted by harpoons with explosive tips.
This year’s meeting marks the 70th anniversary of the commission’s founding, and the 30th birthday of a whaling moratorium estimated to have prevented the killing of tens, even hundreds, of thousands of whales.
The moratorium is credited with allowing many whale populations to recover after being hunted to near-extinction in the 20th century for meat and blubber used to make soap and fuel.
The only commission-sanctioned way to catch whales is with an aboriginal subsistence whaling licence — issued to indigenous communities in North America, Russia, Greenland, and the Caribbean nation of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Japan sets its own quotas for what it says are scientific hunts, while Norway and Iceland do commercial hunts under legal loopholes.
Since 1985, according to the latest IWC figures, 16,235 whales have been hunted for science, 24,381 for commerce, and 10,139 under aboriginal subsistence permits.
In 2014/15, Japan caught 90 Sei, 25 Bryde’s and 81 minke whales — a total of 196 for the year.
The meat ends up on supermarket shelves and in restaurants, in line with an IWC stipulation that whales taken for science must be eaten.
The International Court of Justice ruled in 2014 that Japan was abusing the scientific exemption. Tokyo cancelled its 2014/15 hunt, only to resume it the following year, netting an estimated 300-plus animals.
On next week’s agenda is a proposal by Australia and New Zealand for a rigorous process to review scientific whaling proposals and programmes.
The biggest hunter by far today is Norway — netting 736 minke whales in 2014.
Iceland caught 137 fin and 24 minke whales the same year.
The traditional taste for whale meat, however, has declined significantly in all three countries.
Under aboriginal subsistence catches, the IWC said, 157 minke, 124 gray, 53 bowhead, nine humpback and 12 fin whales were taken in 2014 — 355 in total.
The biggest haul was for autonomous Danish territory Greenland with 176 whales, followed by the Chukotka region in Russia’s Far East with 124, and Alaska in the United States with 53.
Another divisive issue on the agenda is a proposal by Argentina, Brazil, Gabon, South Africa and Uruguay — countries which depend on whale-watching tourist dollars — to create a 20 million-square kilometre (eight square mile) South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary.
The bid — which requires a 75 percent majority to pass — has failed at several previous meetings.
During the 20th century, the vast majority of whaling took place in the southern hemisphere, and many populations are still recovering, observers say.
“The creation of (a) South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary would be a huge milestone for whale protection,” said Greenpeace whale expert John Frizell.
“With the multitude of problems facing these magnificent creatures, they need healthy oceans and they certainly do not need a return to commercial whaling.”
Anti-whaling nations and conservation groups will push hard for projects to reduce fisheries bycatch, which kills an estimated 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises every year.
“As much as Japan cannot be allowed to continue its unlawful whaling operations, the IWC cannot continue to avoid tackling the biggest killer of the lot — bycatch,” said Aimee Leslie, head of the WWF’s cetacean programme.

Nineteen people died when a helicopter carrying oil and gas field workers crashed in a remote area of Siberia in bad weather, Russian investigators said Saturday.
The Mi-8 helicopter carrying 22 people including three crew crashed Friday night in the far-northern Yamalo-Nenetsky region some 2,400 kilometres (1,500 miles) northeast of Moscow, investigators said.
Photos published by the emergencies ministry showed the helicopter broken into pieces and lying on snowy moorland close to woods.
Fog and poor visibility had hindered the search for the crash site, as well as the rescue operation, according to the local emergencies ministry.
Russia’s civil aviation authority said that “based on preliminary data, the incident could be linked to unfavourable weather conditions” with low cloud, falling snow and gusty winds.
It said a special commission would assess the crew’s actions as they made the decision to to fly in adverse weather.
The victims died from multiple injuries at the scene, while three injured were taken to hospital, said a statement by the Investigative Committee, which probes major incidents.
President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences to the relatives and loved ones of the victims, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies.
The helicopter was flying from an oil and gas field in the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk to the small settlement of Urengoi when it crashed Friday between 1400 and 1500 GMT around 45 kilometres from Urengoi, investigators said.
Due to poor weather, rescuers in a helicopter only located the stricken aircraft some seven hours after the crash.
Colonel Dmitry Alexandrov of the emergencies ministry in the Yamalo-Nenetsky region said in televised comments that the helicopter “fell on its right side, and the victims could not get out”.
The survivors were all passengers on the helicopter, the civil aviation authority said. They suffered serious but non-life-threatening injuries, Russian state television reported.
One of the survivors managed to call rescuers on the phone from inside the crashed helicopter, saying it “flew into strong winds and fell” Life News website reported.
The helicopter was transporting workers from a subcontractor of Russian oil giant Rosneft, TASS state news agency reported. Rosneft’s French first vice president Eric Liron travelled to the scene, the company said, quoted by TASS.
The region’s governor Dmitry Kobylkin announced a day of mourning on Saturday with flags lowered and entertainment events cancelled, calling the accident a source of “great sorrow for all of us.”
Mi-8 helicopters are widely used both for civilian and military transport and can carry around 24 passengers. Russia uses the helicopters in its military intervention in Syria.
The helicopter belonged the Skol aviation company based in Siberia, which has more than 20 aircraft and works with oil and gas companies including Rosneft and Lukoil, according to its website.
The helicopter was made in 1984 and had a flight safety licence valid till 2017, the civil aviation authority said.
The Investigative Committee said that the crash could have been caused by a violation of flight safety regulations, a mechanical problem or difficult weather conditions.
A criminal probe had been launched to investigate possible violations, it added.
A similar helicopter crash outside the western Siberian town of Igarka last year claimed 15 lives.

Just nine years after Eli Manning headlined the NFL’s first tentative steps into uncharted territory, the New York Giants star returns to England with his sport now firmly established as a global force.
Manning, the Giants’ Superbowl-winning quarterback, is one of his team’s few remaining players from the group that defeated the Miami Dolphins at Wembley in the first NFL regular-season game to be played in the United Kingdom.
On Sunday, Manning will be part of another historic occasion at Twickenham when the Giants face the Los Angeles Rams in the first NFL fixture to be staged at the 107-year-old home of rugby union.
That the 16th ‘International series’ game in London is another ground-breaking moment in front of a 75,000 sell-out crowd underscores how much the NFL’s appeal has grown overseas since that initial venture in 2007.
Back then, even NFL chiefs were uncertain if their gamble would pay off and a negative response from a country obsessed with soccer could have sunk the plan at the first attempt.
Playing on foreign turf was such an alien concept for the NFL that some Giants players didn’t even know what country they were in when they touched down in England.
“I just remember guys were in a daze a little. They didn’t know where they were or what was going on, what country they were in,” Manning recalled this week.
“(Giants running back) Brandon Jacobs wanted to go see the Eiffel Tower!”
Despite the reluctance of Manning’s fellow travellers, 81,000 fans packed Wembley to see the first match and the NFL has ramped up its presence since then with no signs of the public losing interest.
“It’s been a while since I last went over there. But I had a great experience the first time. I’m excited to go back,” Manning said.
This is the third successive year that three games will be played in London and the Jacksonville Jaguars are playing one ‘home’ match at Wembley each season from 2013 to 2020.
Not content with UK dominance, the NFL are playing a fixture in Mexico in November and commissioner Roger Goodell is on record as saying he wants to take a regular-season game to China in the near feature, with Germany and Brazil also potential venues.
A 10-year deal has been signed with Premier League club Tottenham to play two matches per year from 2018 at their redeveloped White Hart Lane stadium.
The NFL would love to install a full-time franchise in the UK and Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy has suggested his club would be the ideal hosts of a permanent team.
With 14 million British fans and viewership of Sunday games on television more than doubling since 2007, the NFL’s target of having a UK team by 2022 remains well within reach according to Mark Waller, the league’s British-born executive vice-chairman of international.
“The fan base is big enough and passionate enough that it can support a franchise,” Waller said.
“I felt in 2007 it was always a 15-year journey. I think we’re on track to deliver that. I fundamentally believe we will deliver that.”
Rams head coach Jeff Fisher has just experienced the pros and cons of setting up home in a new city after his team moved from St Louis to Los Angeles in the summer.
Fisher has no doubts the UK is ready for its own team and he believes it would prove a huge success.
“The enthusiasm, the support is clearly here. There’s no doubt about that. I know the league is looking really hard at it,” Fisher said.
“It would be great for the NFL if that were able to happen.”

Russia has chosen a goggled wolf as mascot for the 2018 World Cup.
The wolf, unveiled to the public early Saturday after a month of online voting, prevailed over a cat and a tiger dressed in a space suit after receiving more than half the votes.
The mascot — named “Zabivaka”, which in Russian means “one who scores” — was presented on a popular late-night show on Pervy Kanal state television.
More than one million people voted in the contest following what FIFA said was “the most engaging creative process” for selecting an official mascot in its history.
Russia is set to host the 2018 World Cup in 11 cities including Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Sochi.

City have gone four matches in all competitions without a win and head into Sunday’s Premier League clash home to Southampton on the back of a 4-0 thrashing at Barcelona in the Champions League.
It was suggested to Guardiola this week that he might consider a more pragmatic approach to games in the future given City’s recent run.
But the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich boss insisted he would remain true to his attacking principles and style of play that requires his goalkeeper and defenders to play the ball out from the back.
“No, no, I’m not going to change,” Guardiola said. “First, it’s going to happen that if it’s not going well in the future, next season isn’t going well in that way, I will go home.
“I won 21 titles in seven years. So it’s three titles per year playing in that way.
“The way we want to play, the way the academy play for a long time, is the way I think is good because, I’m sorry, in the past it was going well until two weeks or three weeks ago.”
City will be without right-back Pablo Zabaleta, who sustained a knock against Barca, for the visit of Southampton, while fellow defender Bacary Sagna remains on the sidelines with a hamstring injury.
Guardiola also revealed that City captain Vincent Kompany has been mentally scarred by the injury problems he has suffered over the past two seasons.
The Belgium international, 30, was left out of City’s squad for the loss to Barca at the Nou Camp but is expected to be available to face Southampton.
“I thought a few weeks ago maybe Vincent can come back now with his personality, maybe he can do that,” Guardiola said.
“But one day after the training session here, he said, ‘I didn’t feel like this’. At this moment his head is not ready after what happened the last two years to keep him out.
“Vincent was not perfectly fit for Barcelona. We appreciate him a lot. Normally Kompany would be on the bench, but he was not fit.
“I would like when Vincent is fit, I have never been with him. I saw him when he is fit, he is a real central defender. I like him.”
Southampton travel to Manchester on the back of an unlucky 1-0 defeat at Inter Milan in the Europa League on Thursday, but with excellent Premier League form, including a four-game unbeaten run which has taken them up to eighth in the table.
Saints boss Claude Puel will be without Shane Long because of a hamstring injury, with Matt Targett, Ryan Bertrand and Cedric Soares all doubts.
One player who could benefit from Long’s absence is Jay Rodriguez, who is looking to re-establish himself after a difficult time with injuries.
The former Burnley striker has managed only 67 starts in four and a half years at Southampton largely because of injury, but he played against Inter.
“I felt great and I just want more and more of it,” he said. “I’m sure the goals will come, I just need to keep persisting to be on the field.
“It’s one of those things where it happens at times and I’m working extra hard to keep fit. I’m never happy after a game where I’ve not scored but I just need to concentrate on each game as it comes.”

Newly-crowned world champion Marc Marquez’s gamble on using slick tyres under the threat of rain paid off Saturday when he stormed to pole position for this weekend’s Australian MotoGP at Phillip Island.
The 23-year-old Spaniard, on a Repsol Honda, posted the fastest lap of one minute 30.189 seconds amid threatening rain to start on the inside of the grid for Sunday’s race.
It was Marquez’s 37th MotoGP pole and 65th across all classes as he vies for his 30th career premier class win at Phillip Island.
British Honda rider Cal Crutchlow was second, ahead of Spain’s Monster Yamaha racer Pol Espargaro with both to start off the front row with Marquez.
The two-part qualifying session played out under the threat of a downpour coming in off the sea but Marquez, who clinched his third MotoGP world title last weekend in Japan, took the risk and ran with slick tyres on the dry track surface.
His gamble paid off when he reeled off four fastest lap times before finishing 0.792seconds ahead of Crutchlow at the end of Q2.
“This weekend has been really tricky with the weather conditions,” Marquez said.
“You need to be fast, of course, but you also need a clever strategy and at the moment we are going out with the correct tyres every time and we were able to be on pole position.
“I feel comfortable on the bike and I am lucky that it (world title) was already done in Japan because this weekend it is really difficult to manage.”
Marquez rode one of his greatest races to pip Jorge Lorenzo by just 0.249 seconds in last year’s Phillip Island race and his Repsol Honda bike looks superior to the others this weekend.
He holds an unassailable 77-point lead in the standings with three races left, including this weekend at Phillip Island.
Crutchlow, who topped the Q1 session to advance into the second qualifying session along with Lorenzo, ran with intermediate tyres and was always in the top three in the final session.
“We are a little bit disappointed with the result, we could have maybe stole the pole today if I was clever enough,” Crutchlow said.
“In the end I am normally the bloke to put the slicks on first and I should have gone with my gut instinct. I changed my mind and it was the wrong decision to do so.”
Lorenzo could only finish 12th in Q2, some 6.6 seconds behind Marquez, while his Movistar team-mate and nine-time world champion Valentino Rossi failed to make it into the final qualifying session and will start 15th on the grid for Sunday’s race.
Rossi and Lorenzo are fighting for second place in this year’s world championship.
Lorenzo trails Rossi by 14 points heading into the final three races of the season.
“We hope for better conditions because it looks like with our bike we suffer a bit,” Rossi said.
“It depends very much on the pace what happens tomorrow, it looks like when it is very cold we struggle to get the tyres up to temperature and the bike becomes very difficult to ride.”
Swiss Kalex rider Thomas Luthi, third in the Moto2 world championship, will start off the pole with French leader Johann Zarco back on the fourth row in Sunday’s race.
South African Brad Binder, who has already secured the Moto3 world title, has the pole at Phillip Island.

But they were unable to determine who was responsible for two other chemical weapons attacks — against Binnish in Idlib province in March 2015 and Kafr Zita in Hama province in April 2014.
The report was presented Friday to the UN Security Council.
The UN-led joint investigative mechanism (JIM) in late August reported that Syrian government forces had carried out at least two chemical attacks in 2014 and 2015 and that Islamic State jihadists had used mustard gas as a weapon.
Of the nine total alleged chemical attacks it is considering in its ongoing probe, the JIM has now attributed three to the Syrian government and one to the Islamic State group.
In its fourth report, investigators concluded that there is now “sufficient information” that the attack on Qmenas “was caused by a Syrian Arab Armed Forces helicopter dropping a device from a high altitude which hit the ground and released the toxic substance that affected the population.”
Investigators say the substance may have been chlorine gas, based on the symptoms the victims displayed.
In Kafr Zita, however, the JIM could not confirm that the Syrian army had used barrel bombs to dump toxic substances because “the remnants of the device allegedly used had been removed,” the report said.
Investigators also said that a “canister with traces of chlorine” was found in Binnish, though the container could not be “linked to any of several incident locations identified.”
The inquiry’s mandates was extended until October 31 to finish the probe.
Governments in Paris, London and Washington have already called for sanctions against perpetrators of chemical attacks in Syria, including against the regime in Damascus.
But the Syrian government has been shielded by its ally Russia, which has questioned the JIM findings and said the evidence is not conclusive enough to warrant sanctions.
Syria agreed to get rid of its chemical stockpile and to refrain from making any use of toxic substances in warfare when it joined the Chemical Weapons Convention in 2013, under pressure from Russia.

Less than 12 months since his second spell as Chelsea manager ended amid on-pitch turmoil and bitter off-pitch recrimination, Jose Mourinho returns to Stamford Bridge with Manchester United on Sunday.
With three Premier League titles, three League Cups and one FA Cup won across his two stints in west London, Mourinho is the most successful manager in Chelsea’s history.
The love affair ended last December after nine league defeats and what technical director Michael Emenalo termed “palpable discord” between manager and players, but Mourinho prefers to remember the good times.
“Some managers, when they leave clubs, they like to — I don’t know if you have the same saying in England — wash their dirty clothes,” he said.
“It means speak about what happened and go back and speak and speak and speak. I’m not (like) that.
“I leave the clubs and I leave with a very good feeling, a feeling of: I did everything to succeed, I gave everything to the club and I don’t like to go back and speak, especially about the bad things.
“I keep the good things and in Chelsea (there were) so many good things in terms of results, in terms of friends that I have for life, an amazing empathy with the supporters.
“The supporters didn’t change their relation with me because last season was a couple of months with bad results.
“So I keep all these good memories.”
Mourinho previously returned to the Bridge as an opposition manager in March 2010, when his Inter Milan side won 1-0 to complete a 3-1 aggregate victory in the Champions League round of 16.
Inter finished the season as European champions.
Mourinho cannot scale the same heights with United this season (they are not in the Champions League), but after a run of three straight defeats in mid-September, there are signs his methods are beginning to bear fruit at Old Trafford.
United have gone six games unbeaten and after a creditable 0-0 draw at in-form Liverpool on Monday, they crushed Fenerbahce 4-1 at home on Thursday to invigorate their Europa League campaign.
Rested for the European fixture, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Ander Herrera and Marcus Rashford are all likely to return for the trip to Stamford Bridge, where United last won in September 2012.
It leaves Juan Mata, Anthony Martial and captain Wayne Rooney sweating over their places, while Mourinho must also choose between Daley Blind and the fit-again Luke Shaw at left-back.
Centre-back Chris Smalling will be assessed after being withdrawn at half-time against Fenerbahce with what the club said was a minor muscular problem.
Like United, Chelsea have reacted positively to September setbacks.
Antonio Conte’s side lost back-to-back games, against Liverpool and Arsenal last month, but have since beaten Hull City 2-0 and won 3-0 at home to defending champions Leicester City.
Conte, whose side are two points above United in fifth place, has said he has “great respect” for Mourinho and expressed hope the Portuguese will receive a “good reception”.
But Nigerian winger Victor Moses, who is threatening to become a mainstay at wing-back under Conte, has criticised Mourinho for creating divisions within the changing room.
“He never spoke to me,” Moses told ESPN this week. “I thought in my head, ‘He’s got his own players already.’
“The manager who is here now (Conte) is giving everyone a chance, even the young lads.”
Conte has confirmed he will persist with the 3-4-3 system he has been using since the second half of the 3-0 loss at Arsenal a month ago.
He will make a late decision on whether to pick Willian, the Brazilian forward who returned to the club on Thursday following compassionate leave after the death of his mother.
Captain John Terry could return after over a month out with an ankle injury, but Cesc Fabregas (thigh) and Branislav Ivanovic, who has a minor muscle injury, are out.

One victory from their first trip to the World Series in 71 years, the Chicago Cubs have long-suffering supporters excited about the prospects for their first World Series title since 1908.
But they have been down this path before, so forgive them if they approach Saturday’s game six of the National League Championship Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Wrigley Field with joy and trepidation as well.
The Cubs were one win from the World Series in 1984 before San Diego rallied to win the final three games to take the series and advance to the Major League Baseball final.
And in 2003, with the Cubs leading the best-of-seven series 3-2 and ahead in the sixth game 3-0 in the eighth inning, disaster struck when a fan, Steve Bartman, tried to grab a foul ball in the front row of the stands and disrupted a potential leaping catch by Cubs outfielder Moises Alou.
Instead of the Cubs being four outs from the World Series, the Florida Marlins had new life and went on to score eight runs in the inning, win the game and the seventh game to capture the series and again deny the Cubs a trip to the Fall Classic.
The Cubs made it to the National League final last year, only to be swept by the New York Mets.
And then there is the “Curse of the Billy Goat,” in which the owner of the Billy Goat Tavern, Billy Sianis, was asked to leave the fourth game of the 1945 World Series at Wrigley Field because the odor of his pet goat was bothering other spectators. He responded by “cursing” the Cubs and they have not reached the World Series since.
But that could change Saturday, although the Dodgers will start ace pitcher Clayton Kershaw, who blanked Chicago earlier in the series.
“With pitchers like Kershaw, you have to take advantage of every opportunity when you’re facing that level of pitching,” Cubs manager Joe Maddon said.
“We’re not going to run away from anything. It’s within our reach right now. I do want us to go after it as though it’s, again, hate to say it, but let’s just go play our game Saturday and see how it falls.”
Maddon does not fear the weight of history, confident in the players who gave the Cubs the best record in Major League Baseball this season.
“It’s going to be a formidable event,” Maddon said. “Our guys will absolutely be ready for the moment. I promise you that. It’s great. The city of Chicago has got to be buzzing pretty much right now. I expect a sellout at Wrigley. It will be a lot of fun.”
Even Kershaw knows the game carries the tension of a 108-year title drought for the Cubs that represents the longest in North American sports history.
“I don’t know if I have a word for it,” Kershaw said. “But I think you do everything you can to try and keep it just like another start at the beginning. Then obviously the magnitude and the situation of the game kind of raises everybody’s adrenaline and things like that.”
Kyle Hendricks will start on the mound for the Cubs, knowing the emotions that will surround the encounter.
“You draw on your experiences,” he said. “This is still the same game. You go out there and you’re making the same pitches, it’s the same lineup, same hitters, there’s just more going on the outside.
“So all the attention, the added pressure coming from the outside, you don’t pay attention to it, really. It has nothing to do with the job that you have to do when you go out there, so you just pretty much take it as any other game.”

Australian Daniel Ricciardo believes he has a perfect solution to Mercedes? internal battle for the world Formula One drivers title -? let him win to keep everyone happy.
The beaming Red Bull driver said he knew he had the potential to play a role as a possible ‘king-maker’ in the title race.
“The best thing is that I win the race and that keeps everyone happy,? he laughed.
But, he warned, Sunday?s race could be a feisty and dramatic affair if he and his Red Bull team can maintain the performance levels they delivered in practice on Friday when he split the Silver Arrows in second practice.
Nico Rosberg, who leads his Mercedes team-mate defending champion Lewis Hamilton by 33 points with four races remaining, wound up fastest ahead of Ricciardo.
Hamilton was third.
?It was okay, but I had a minor problem that we will have fixed for tomorrow,? he said.
Rosberg said he was aware of the threat from Red Bull.
?They are fast and competitive, just like they have been in the last few races,” said the German.
Mercedes have given Rosberg a new engine and several other new power unit parts for this weekend, a move that may give him an edge over Hamilton.

While not itself a member of the court, the United States likes other countries to accept its jurisdiction, seeing it as an arm against the impunity sometimes enjoyed by rogue leaders.
“We’re concerned about this decision,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
“We do think that the ICC has made valuable contributions in the service of accountability in a number of situations and we hope that other governments would share that.”
The decision followed a dispute last year when Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir visited South Africa, despite facing an ICC arrest warrant over alleged war crimes.
South Africa refused to arrest him, saying that as a head of state attending a summit he enjoyed diplomatic immunity.
“There is a view in Africa that the ICC in choosing who to prosecute has seemingly preferred to target leaders in Africa,” South African Justice Minister Michael Masutha told AFP.
The ICC, set up in 2002, has often struggled with a lack of international cooperation, including from the United States, which has signed the court’s treaty but never ratified it.

NBA team owners and the players union have made “tremendous progress” toward a new collective bargaining agreement, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said Friday, with rich new television deals helping talks.
Former Chicago Bulls superstar Michael Jordan being involved as owner of the Charlotte Hornets has helped build trust between owners and players, either of whom could opt out of their current deal December 15 and potentially set up the first league shutdown since 2011 come next July.
“We’ve made tremendous progress,” Silver said. “We’re not done-done as bargainers in terms of ultimately having a completed collective bargaining agreement. But we’re on our way toward getting an extension done of this collective bargaining agreement… We’re not quite there yet. But I continue to be optimistic.”
The salary cap jumped beyond $90 million thanks to huge revenue boosts from new TV contracts compared to less than $60 million when the NBA ended an eight-month stoppage in 2011 and played a 2011-12 season shortened by 16 games per club.
“The fact there’s more money to distribute among our players and teams has created an atmosphere that makes it more conducive to continue,” Silver said. “There’s a sense across the table that we have a system that we both fought hard for in the last round of collective bargaining that for the most part is working pretty well.”
It’s the first deal that will be signed by Silver as commissioner and new National Basketball Players Association executive director Michele Roberts.
Players have appeared at talks, including union president Chris Pual and stars like LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony, and the league has shared all financial information with the union as they look to extend a deal where revenue is split 49 and 51 percent between owners and players.
“There hasn’t been agreement on everything. I think there has been a healthy back and forth, but I think it has begun from a basis of trust,” Silver said.
Jordan being on the negotiating committee has helped pave the way to success as it was when he sparked the Bulls to six titles in the 1990s.
“It doesn’t mean that if Michael says it, it necessarily means that (players) accept that as the position they should take,” Silver said. “But that has really added a special element, to have a superstar player like that owning a team and being part of these discussions.
Silver does not object to moves like former MVP and scoring champion Kevin Durant joining the Golden State Warriors, but Silver worries more about balancing the hopes of 30 clubs instead of the title quest for one.
“I have a different perspective than an individual team that’s trying to do everything it can to win championships,” Silver said. “My perspective is to build competitive balance among 30 teams.”
Silver hopes players will not kneel for the US national anthem as some in the NFL are doing to protest police brutality.
“What we’ve seen in multiple pre-season games so far is our players standing,” Silver said. “It would be my hope that they would continue to stand for the national anthem. I think that is the appropriate thing to do.”
Silver said the league will continue to consider seeding playoff teams regardless of conference but a short term change is unlikely.

A furious Venezuelan opposition vowed mass street protests next week, accusing the Socialist government Friday of staging a coup by blocking efforts for a recall referendum against unpopular President Nicolas Maduro.
With Maduro vowing to hold onto power, his opponents cranked up the heat in a stand-off that is destabilizing the volatile, oil-rich South American state, stricken by food shortages and violent crime.
The opposition MUD coalition called for nationwide demonstrations from next Wednesday against the decision to annul a key stage in the referendum process.
“A coup d’etat was carried out yesterday against all Venezuelans,” Henrique Capriles, a leading MUD figure, told a press conference, shouting furiously.
Authorities on Thursday quashed the opposition’s main strategy to get rid of the man they accuse of driving the oil-rich country to the brink of economic collapse.
The National Electoral Council (CNE) said it had indefinitely suspended the recall referendum process after criminal courts in five states ruled the opposition had committed fraud in an initial petition drive.
The opposition had been gearing up for the last hurdle in the complex process: a three-day drive starting next Wednesday to collect signatures from four million voters demanding a recall referendum.
Now that the courts and electoral authorities have stymied that bid, Capriles said Wednesday would instead mark the start of a wave of street protests.
“That day is going to be the beginning of a mobilization across the whole country,” he said.
“We will take Venezuela from end to end. People will be mobilized in every corner of our country to restore constitutional order.”
An opposition rally on September 1 drew hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in Caracas. Capriles vowed next week’s action would be more sustained.
“We will mobilize as much as we have to,” he said.
Analysts have warned of a risk of violent unrest in this country of 30 million people.
Hit by the fall in crude oil prices, the economy has crashed. Food shortages have sparked looting over recent months.
Riots in 2014 left 43 people dead.
“The referendum was going to be a pressure valve,” said Jose Vicente Haro, a constitutional expert.
“When the institutional paths are closed, there is a rise in violence and political conflict.”
The top heads of the armed forces have previously pledged loyalty to Maduro but Capriles has insinuated in the past that mid-ranking officers suffering in the crisis may feel differently.
“I hope the patriotic military servicemen of our country will uphold the constitution,” he said Friday.
The United States said it was “deeply concerned” by the decision to halt the referendum process.
“By doing so, we believe the CNE prevents the Venezuelan people from exercising their important constitutional right,” said State Department spokesman John Kirby.
Maduro has accused Washington of plotting to overthrow him. He brands the crisis a capitalist conspiracy.
Capriles said he and seven other opposition figures had received court orders barring them from leaving the country.
Maduro’s camp hinted it would seek to have opposition leaders jailed over the alleged fraud.
It has previously sidelined opponents by jailing them, such as Leopoldo Lopez, the leader of the anti-government protests in 2014.
“Let us hope that those responsible will now be sought out and detained and go to prison for the deception they have committed,” Maduro’s number two, Diosdado Cabello, said in a speech.
Public support for Maduro has crumbled under the pressure of a crippling recession, soaring inflation and widespread shortages of food, medicine and basic goods.
A recent poll found more than 75 percent of Venezuelans disapprove of Maduro.
The MUD says Maduro and his allies control the courts and electoral authorities and are using them to cling to power.
Maduro accused the opposition of “gigantic fraud,” in a speech before leaving on a tour of the Middle East.
There he planned to push his plan for major oil producers to slash output, to boost prices in the hope of dragging Venezuela out of crisis.

Former Chelsea and Ivory Coast star Drogba stunned the Impact by demanding to be left out of the squad for their game against Toronto FC on Sunday after discovering he was not in the starting lineup.
Although Impact President Joey Saputo said on Tuesday the club had settled its differences with Drogba, the 38-year-old’s no-show has brought a league fine.
“Consistent with the Collective Bargaining Agreement, Drogba has been fined an undisclosed amount for his failure to appear for the Montreal Impact’s match against Toronto FC on October 16,” the MLS said in a statement.
In a separate ruling, the MLS said it had fined New York City FC player Diego Martinez for an undisclosed sum after he was found to have sworn at a DC United ballboy on Sunday.
However, the league said that an investigation involving interviews with multiple witnesses had found no evidence that Martinez used a homophobic slur against the individual.

Three-time champions Toulon edged Sale 15-5 in the European Champions Cup on Friday, but their failure to claim a bonus point could prove fatal to their chances of reaching the knockout round.
The French giants scored all of their points in the first quarter of the match and in an underwhelming display on the outskirts of Manchester they were fortunate to escape with a win.
“I am very happy with this victory. We had a very good start. If we didn’t start like that, we would not have won,” said Toulon coach Diego Dominguez.
Sale director of rugby Steve Diamond admitted that his team fell just short against the misfiring French superstars.
“We stood toe to toe with them but didn’t have enough bullets in the gun,” he said.
“We had field position in the last 20 minutes but, fair play to them, they counteracted our drive. But there were a lot of young English lads out there who stood their corner.”
After slumping to a 31-23 home defeat to defending champions Saracens in their tournament opener last weekend Toulon were handed the perfect start on Friday.
Sale flanker Magnus Lund was yellow-carded for a late tackle on Juan Fernandez Lobbe and Toulon pounced, scoring all of their 15 points while their opponents were a man down.
Welsh full-back Leigh Halfpenny popped over the penalty awarded for Lund’s infringement before the French side scored two quickfire tries.
Mamuka Gorgodze smashed through the defensive line to allow Charles Ollivon to score his fifth try of the season, shrugging off a tackle from Peter Stringer, who was playing despite having attended the funeral of former Irish teammate Anthony Foley earlier in the day.
Halfpenny kicked the conversion before the Welsh star added his team’s second try.
Fly-half Francois Trinh Duc punted a testing crossfield kick deep into the corner where Sale winger Byron McGuigan was unable to gather cleanly.
As the ball dropped, Halfpenny was alert to the opportunity to dart over from close range for his first try of the campaign. Halfpenny was unable to convert from tight on the line.
Toulon were then reduced to 14 men when skipper and No.8 Duane Vermeulen was sin-binned for tripping.
Sale, beaten 28-11 at Sacrlets last week, got on the board when winger Paolo Odogwu sprinted away down the left flank to score after a neat exchange of passes between Mike Haley, Will Addison and Sam James had capitalised on a poor clearing kick from Halfpenny.
Addison missed the conversion as Toulon held on to their 15-5 lead at the interval.
Halfpenny missed a tough penalty early in the second period before Addison saw his own penalty effort, far more easier, hit the post.
Sale were much the better side in the second half but were left to regret not going for the posts on three occasions which could have yielded a crucial nine points.