Month: October 2016

Belgium on Saturday officially signed the landmark EU-Canada trade accord after a drama that saw Belgian regions threaten to torpedo years of negotiations.
“Nothing is simple in Belgium but few things are impossible,” tweeted Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders after signing the pact on behalf of his country.
EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malstrom, who negotiated the deal, attended the signing with Belgium the last of the 28 EU countries to approve the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA).
On Sunday, the European Union and Canada will formally sign the trade accord at a summit in Brussels.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hailed the deal as “a good sign in an uncertain world” in a phone call with EU president Donald Tusk on Friday, an EU source said.
CETA will remove 99 percent of customs duties between the two sides, linking the single EU market of 500 million people with the world’s 10th largest economy.
Sunday’s summit will begin at 0930 GMT, with the agreement due to be signed at 1100 GMT, Tusk’s spokesman Preben Aamann said on Twitter.
Just days ago, CETA — the most ambitious deal ever negotiated by the EU — had been left hanging by a thread due to protests from Belgium’s Wallonia region and other French-speaking communities over its potentially harmful effect on local interests.
Trudeau had been due to arrive in Brussels on Thursday to sign the deal but his trip had to be called off, with leaders including Tusk warning that the debacle was further damaging EU credibility following Britain’s shock vote to leave the bloc.
After hitting deadlock in talks with Walloon leaders last week, an emotional Canadian Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland dismissed Brussels as “incapable” of achieving an international agreement.
Paul Magnette, head of the southern, French-speaking Wallonia region, had fought for regional farming interests and guarantees against international investors forcing governments to change laws against the wishes of the people.
Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel has said the fraught talks with Wallonia that were finally resolved on Thursday “did not change a comma” in the deal, but Magnette says he received assurances from the federal government of strengthened social and environmental protection.
“CETA amended, CETA corrected — that is fairer than the former CETA and offers more guarantees,” Magnette said.
The EU was cleared to sign the pact shortly after Wallonia’s parliament voted to approve the deal, along with that of the Brussels-Capital region and the Federation Wallonia-Brussels.
Once signed by the EU and Canada on Sunday, the trade pact will go into effect on a provisional basis, pending full member state ratification — a process that could take years.
Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia, which currently holds the EU presidency, hailed the delayed approval of the deal as “a milestone in the EU’s trade policy”.
“It has the potential to set the way forward for future trade deals,” he said.
Hinging on CETA’s outcome are complex EU trade negotiations with other countries, including an even bigger and more controversial proposed deal with the United States known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
Wallonia has already warned it would never accept a trade deal that does not have same guarantees as those in the new CETA.
“From now on, we can draw the lesson: with CETA improved, TTIP is dead and buried”, Magnette said.

When one day closes then be sure that another one will open. A few days after she lost her job at the Royal media, former business news reporter Terry Anne has landed a job by Cytonn investments.
Terryanne Chebet will be the guest speaker at Cytonns training event that will be held this weekend, October 29, 2016. The former anchor has been given an opportunity to speak to entrepreneurs like herself who are doing great things to change the economy of Kenya.
She announced the good news through her social media saying,
 
 
In another post Terryanne reveals how she was about to ditch the event two days before it was to happen. She however drew her inspiration from something (being fired) that pushed her to inspire and motivate young entrepreneurs on the importance of personal branding.
Terryanne will be appearing to represent her company, a  beauty business that produces bath and body products that represent Africa’s finest oils. She founded the company in 2014 as she hoped to find a product that would treat her daughter’s eczema.
This is one of the many great things the former business anchor does to keep her bank account escalating.

Germany’s World Cup-winning coach Joachim Loew is set to extend his reign until 2020 amidst reports his new contract will be confirmed on Monday by the German FA (DFB).
German daily Bild reported on Saturday that the 56-year-old, who took charge in 2006, will pen a two-year extension to lead Germany’s defence of the World Cup in Russia in 2018 and to the European Championships in 2020.
Loew, who led die Mannschaft to their fourth World Cup title in Brazil two years ago, is set to receive a huge pay rise to four million euros ($4.4m) per year.
His current contract, which expires after the 2018 World Cup, reportedly earned him an annual salary of around three million euros.
The DFB’s president Reinhard Grindel refused to comment when approached by SID, an AFP subsidiary, but he is believed to want to get the deal sealed before the German FA meets in Erfurt on November 3-4.
If Loew stays in office until 2020, his 14-year reign would make him the joint second-longest serving Germany coach, equal to Helmut Schoen (1964-78).
Sepp Herberger holds the 28-year record, from 1936-64, during which time he led West Germany to their first World Cup title in 1954.

Cristiano Ronaldo returned to goalscoring form with his first hat-trick of the season and also missed a penalty as Real Madrid extended their lead at the top of La Liga with a 4-1 win at Alaves on Saturday.
Barcelona move up to second, just two points adrift, despite a below-par display in edging past bottom-placed Granada 1-0 thanks to Rafinha’s spectacular winner.
Atletico Madrid remain three points back of city rivals Real thanks to doubles from Yannick Carrasco and Kevin Gameiro in a 4-2 win over Malaga despite playing with 10 men for the final half hour.
Ronaldo’s wayward form in recent weeks had come under the spotlight — even drawing whistles from the Santiago Bernabeu crowd last weekend — but he turned the game around after Deyverson had put Alaves into a shock early lead.
“We are always going to demand goals from Cristiano, but he was good in all aspects,” said Madrid boss Zinedine Zidane.
“We knew how to suffer because the first half and the start of the second weren’t comfortable or easy.
“But playing like this, if you know how to suffer and then add a bit of movement, we know what we can do.”
Real’s unbeaten run stretches to 26 matches, but their defensive struggles continued in Vitoria as Zidane’s men got off to the worst possible start when Deyverson pounced on an error from goalkeeper Keylor Navas to slot Alaves into a seventh-minute lead.
The visitors needed two slices of fortune to turn the game around before half-time.
Firstly, Deyverson was adjudged to have handled a Gareth Bale free-kick inside his own area and Ronaldo slotted home the penalty.
Ronaldo’s second came 16 minutes later when his low effort from outside the area deflected off Zouhair Feddal and flew into the far corner.
The Portuguese missed the chance to seal his hat-trick when his second spot-kick was saved by Fernando Pacheco 12 minutes from time.
However, Alvaro Morata again made his presence felt off the bench as he raced onto Marcelo’s through ball and lobbed the onrushing Pacheco for his fourth goal as a substitute this season.
And Marcelo was involved again in the fourth as he and Ronaldo exchanged passes before the latter smashed home two minutes from time.
An injury-ravaged Barcelona named Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar in attack against winless Granada, but had to rely on free-scoring midfielder Rafinha in a much closer contest than anticipated at the Camp Nou.
“It is clear it wasn’t a brilliant match on our part,” admitted Barca boss Luis Enrique.
“Sometimes the players aren’t machines.”
Rafinha’s overhead kick broke the deadlock three minutes into the second-half after Barca toiled to break down Granada’s deep-lying defence before the break.
Neymar, Suarez and Messi all missed chances to add a second, but Granada never threatened to end their record of losing in every one of their now 24 visits to the Camp Nou.
Atletico bounced back from their first defeat of the season at Sevilla last weekend, but made life difficult for themselves against Malaga.
Carrasco fired home his sixth goal in his last six games to put Atletico in front before Gameiro took advantage of some slack Malaga defending to double the lead inside 25 minutes.
Sandro Ramirez’s stunning free-kick brought Malaga back into the game, but Gameiro restored Atletico’s two-goal lead when he latched onto Antoine Griezmann’s flick-on to make it 3-1 just before the break.
However, Stefan Savic picked up two quickfire yellow cards to leave Atletico a man short for the final half hour.
Ignacio Camacho headed home from a corner to cut Malaga’s deficit once more, but Carrasco showed stunning speed and produced an unerring finish into the far corner to seal the points four minutes from time.
“I think he has improved with a lot of hard work and sacrifice. He has understood his own potential,” Atletico boss Diego Simeone said of Carrasco.
“Today he scored a goal with his left foot and then another one on his right on the counter-attack with the finish of a striker.”
Sevilla slip to fourth after being held 1-1 at Sporting Gijon.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warned against the threat of “terrorist governments” being established in North Africa as violence spreads from Syria and Iraq, as he met Saturday with EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini.
“The terrorist actions in Syria and Iraq are a serious threat to the world. If there is not a serious battle against terrorism in the region, we will see several terrorist governments and entities emerge in the North African region,” said Rouhani, according to the presidency’s website.
The Islamic State jihadist group has spread from its bases in Syria and Iraq to gain a significant foothold in Libya, and it has also carried out attacks in Algeria and Egypt.
Mogherini also met with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during her visit to Tehran for “high-level talks” on the Syria crisis.
The EU official, who was due to fly on to Iran’s regional rival Saudi Arabia, was quoted by local media as saying the EU “needed the cooperation of Iran, a key power for solving the region’s problems”.
Rouhani called on the European Union to put pressure on regional powers to cut support to rebel groups in Syria.
Iran provides financial and military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and it accuses Saudi Arabia and Turkey of funding the rebel groups it is fighting.
“The fight against terrorism in Syria and Iraq is the priority,” said Rouhani, adding that the territorial integrity of both countries must be preserved.

Spain was close to turning the page on a 10-month political crisis Saturday as lawmakers readied to vote the conservatives back into power, although at the head of a government with unprecedented opposition.
Aided by divisions among his rivals, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is widely expected to win a crunch parliamentary confidence vote later Saturday which will see him officially reappointed as Spanish leader.
In a sign of how deep the divisions run, former Socialist chief Pedro Sanchez, a staunch opponent of Rajoy who was ousted in a party rebellion this month, announced he was quitting parliament just hours before the vote in a tearful media appearance.
Near parliament, hundreds of protesters unhappy about corruption and sweeping spending cuts during Rajoy’s first term took to the streets under strong police watch, shouting “they don’t represent us.”
“I don’t agree with what is going to happen today,” said Carmen Lopez, a 65-year-old retired computer technician.
“It’s going to be the same government, or similar, than the past four years, which was disastrous for Spain.”
Party leaders this week appeared far from conciliatory as the confidence vote neared.
They came out fighting, criticising Rajoy and each other just as they did over the past 10 months as the country went through two inconclusive elections.
This unstable period saw Spain go from jubilation and hope after polls last December ended the two-party system as millions voted for two upstart parties to disillusion following repeat polls in June that yielded similarly inconclusive results.
Rajoy’s Popular Party (PP) won both elections but without enough parliamentary seats to govern alone. As no political grouping was able to agree on a viable coalition, Spain looked set for an unprecedented third election in less than a year.
This all changed last weekend when the Socialists swallowed a bitter pill and opted to abstain in Saturday’s confidence vote to avoid more polls, after weeks of bitter in-fighting that saw Sanchez ousted as leader.
This gives Rajoy, the official prime ministerial candidate, enough traction to see him through the vote.
In retaliation, Sanchez announced Saturday he had resigned as lawmaker, unable to choose between going against his principles and abstaining, or going against his party and voting no to Rajoy.
In an announcement just hours before the vote, the 44-year-old emphasised “how painful the decision was” before breaking down and choking back tears.
Unlike when he came to power in 2011 with an absolute majority, Rajoy’s party will only have 137 out of 350 seats in parliament and will face huge opposition, forcing him to negotiate every bill.
First on his list will be a 2017 budget, which may need at least five billion euros ($5.5 billion) in spending cuts to reduce the deficit under EU pressure.
But this is likely to face stiff opposition both in parliament and on the street, and already Rajoy’s rivals have pledged to vote against it.
Rajoy, meanwhile, has called on the opposition to let him govern effectively, pointing to the return to growth and drop in unemployment on his watch after a devastating economic crisis.
Political analyst Pablo Simon said there was “no doubt” his term in office would be the most “turbulent” ever in Spain and could prompt Rajoy to call early elections if he keeps hitting brick walls.
But he predicted Rajoy would not find it as difficult as expected.
The Socialists, for one, will need time to rebuild in the opposition and will not want early elections, knowing they would fare badly after their very public breakdown.
The PP also has a majority in the Senate, and may be able to form pacts with smaller parties in the lower house to see laws through, Simon added.

Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi on Saturday rejected a peace proposal presented to him by UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, a presidency source told AFP.
Hadi “received Ould Cheikh Ahmed and refused to take the UN proposal” handed to him by the envoy, the source said.
Contents of the roadmap which the envoy presented to the rebels on Tuesday have not been made public, but according to informed sources its terms include easing Hadi out of power.

OPEC officials held talks with Russia and other non-cartel members Saturday in Vienna to debate how to implement a plan aimed at cutting oil output to reduce a global supply glut and bolster prices.
“The recovery process has taken far too long and we cannot risk delaying the adjustment any further,” said Sanusi Barkindo, the secretary general of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, in his opening remarks.
“Therefore, we should be calling for maximum commitment from all OPEC and non-OPEC countries in this regard and we should expect no less as this is our commitment, not only to our member countries but to the global community.”
Moscow’s delegation declined to comment before the meeting. But OPEC and Russia — the world’s top oil producer along with Saudi Arabia — have held several meetings recently to tighten cooperation to ease price volatility.
“There is an acute and urgent need to speed up the rebalancing,” Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said during a recent Vienna visit.
Other non-OPEC members attending the technical committee meeting included delegations from Oman, Bolivia and Azerbaijan.
“We will discuss the recognised positions of countries, first of all the OPEC countries,” Azerbaijan’s Energy Minister Natig Aliyev told reporters in Vienna.
He added that some measures needed “to be taken to stabilise the market”.
On Friday, OPEC-only members, led by oil kingpin Saudi Arabia, had already met to try and hammer out details of the plan ahead of a summit in late November.
In a surprise move, the cartel last month agreed a deal to trim production by up to 750,000 barrels per day to between 32.5 and 33 millions per day.
The announcement of the first such move since 2008 sent prices surging.
Production has outpaced demand over the past two years, with the resulting supply glut hammering prices from highs of more than $100 a barrel in June 2014 to near 13-year lows below $30 in February this year.
Prices are currently hovering around $50 a barrel, still too low for oil revenue-dependent nations.
But obstacles remain to the new accord as some OPEC members refuse to lower their output.
Iran, Saudi Arabia’s bitter geopolitical rival, was exempted from the cuts as it is still ramping up production depleted by years of crippling Western economic sanctions lifted only in January.
Meanwhile, Iraq also recently said it should not participate in the deal because it is waging a war against the Islamic State group.
Some analysts say Baghdad’s position risks derailing implementation of the OPEC agreement.

French President Francois Hollande urged Britain to take in 1,500 unaccompanied minors from the “Jungle” as officials stepped up efforts to finish demolishing the almost-deserted Calais migrant camp.
Hailing the evacuation of the sprawling encampment, Hollande vowed that France would not accept the emergence of any more makeshift camps, which have become a glaring symbol of Europe’s worst migration crisis since World War II.
He pledged youngsters left at a container camp near the site would be dispersed around the country, with the hope that they would eventually be taken in by Britain.
“We had to rise to the challenge of the refugee issue. We could not tolerate the camp and we will not tolerate any others,” he said while visiting a reception centre in Doue-la-Fontaine in western France.
“There are 1,500 unaccompanied minors left in Calais and they will be very quickly dispatched to other (reception) centres,” he added.
Hollande said he had spoken to Prime Minister Theresa May to ensure that British officials would “accompany these minors to these centres and would play their part in subsequently welcoming them to the United Kingdom”.
A British government spokeswoman said it was committed to working with France to protect the children in Calais and transfer eligible children as soon as possible.
“We have already transferred a considerable number of unaccompanied minors to the UK so far this year, and as the home secretary told parliament this week, several hundred more children and young people will be brought to the UK in the coming days and weeks,” she said.
Britain’s Help Refugees charity estimated that as of late Friday there remained more than 1,000 unaccompanied children living in the container camp.
Since mid-October, Britain has taken in 274 children from the Jungle, mostly youngsters with relatives already living in the country.
Meanwhile in Calais, three huge diggers moved in to clear the debris of makeshift dwellings in the northern section of the camp which until Tuesday had been home to between 6,000 and 8,000 migrants.
Many tents and shacks had been ravaged as huge fires ripped through the camp on Wednesday. Around a dozen riot police trucks were posted at the camp’s entrance, where skips were in place to take away piles of debris.
Officials hope to complete the clearance by Monday night and on Saturday morning there was little sign of life except workmen and police.
Migrants, mainly from Afghanistan, Sudan and Eritrea had flocked to the camp near the northern port of Calais in the hope of making it across the Channel to Britain.
Clare Moseley, founder of British charity Care4Calais, expressed concern for those who had been evacuated.
“We are worried about what happens next — there will be a multitude of small camps where conditions are even worse than in the Jungle,” she said.
Many Calais locals also fear the Jungle will simply spring back up once the current clearance operation is over.
In an illustration of the ongoing nature of the problem, more than 2,000 newly-arrived migrants have set up camp in northeastern Paris where hundreds of igloo tents have popped up along a 700-metre (yard) stretch of Avenue de Flandres, a tree-lined boulevard leading towards the city centre.
But Hollande said they too would be evacuated.
“Those who have gone to Paris are not people who have come from Calais. There are perhaps a few,” he said, describing them as part of “a new migration wave of people coming from Libya in recent weeks and months”.
“We are going to do the same as we did in Calais,” the French leader said, meaning makeshift camps in Paris would also be cleared.
“I have been perfectly clear: those who have a right to claim asylum will go to welcome and orientation centres, and those who don’t will be shown the door,” he said, referring to their imminent deportations.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that the Paris camp would be “handled” next week.

Iraq launched a broad offensive to retake Mosul from the Islamic State group almost two weeks ago. Here is what we know so far about the country’s biggest military operation in years:
Which Iraqi forces are involved?
Iraq’s Counter-Terrorism Service and Rapid Response Division — its two most elite special forces units — are fighting alongside the army, federal and local police and Kurdish regional peshmerga forces.
The Hashed al-Shaabi — an umbrella organisation for pro-government paramilitary forces that is dominated by Iran-backed Shiite militias but also includes Sunni tribesmen — largely remained on the sidelines in the early days of the operation but has now also entered the fight.
It is a heterogeneous coalition of sometimes-rival forces that have not all operated together before, but they have been tasked with fighting on different fronts, helping to minimise the potential for problems.
Where are they attacking?
The Mosul operation opened with attacks from the north, east and south, while the western approach to the city — which is exposed to IS-held areas between it and Syria — was left open.
Now, the Hashed al-Shaabi have launched an operation aiming to advance from south of Mosul toward the town of Tal Afar — an IS stronghold located between the city and the Syrian border — in an effort to cut jihadist supply lines.
How are the jihadists responding?
With brutality, as they have often done before.
The United Nations said it has received credible reports that IS executed more than 250 people in the Mosul area over two days earlier this week, and has also seized tens of thousands of people for use as human shields against advancing Iraqi forces.
The jihadists have repeatedly targeted attacking Iraqi troops with suicide car bombs, as well as employed artillery and small arms fire.
Outside of the Mosul area, IS has launched several diversionary attacks, including one in the Kurdish-held city of Kirkuk that left dozens dead. The jihadists also struck in Rutba in western Iraq, and the Sinjar area in the country’s north.
There have been conflicting reports of IS movements during the battle, pointing to both withdrawals to neighbouring Syria and the deployment of reinforcements to Iraq.
The United States says the battle has taken a heavy toll on IS forces, with up to 900 killed in the first week and a half of the operation.
How are civilians affected?
As Iraqi forces approach, thousands of civilians have been fleeing IS-held areas to escape both jihadist rule and impending fighting.
The International Organisation for Migration said Saturday that 17,520 people have been displaced since the beginning of the operation, but that figure is expected to increase dramatically as Iraqi forces close in on Mosul.
According to the UN, up to a million people could be displaced by the battle for the city — a major problem given that existing, under-construction and planned camps can only house around half that number.
Displacement is especially difficult for rural farming communities, whose wealth lies in fields and livestock that they cannot take to camps.
The situation for displaced Iraqis will get even more difficult as winter rains and colder weather set in.

The rapper says music is a career to many and most artistes including himself pay bills using the money they earn from their music. He gave an example of Sautisol who have penetrated into different continents through their music and how much their career has bloomed.
 
He also mentioned that he is not in any other profession expect the music industry. Having dropped the singer has pulled back all his fans but he feels this is not enough. In the Nyashinki said it takes a lot to be among the top ten artistes in Kenya therefore requires double the effort.
He however does not condemn having ‘Naija night’ in Nairobi but he hopes Kenyans will learn to appreciate their own music and focus at building the Kenyan music industry.

Newly crowned world number one Angelique Kerber crushed the defending champion Agnieszka Radwanska 6-2 6-1 on Saturday to advance to the final of the WTA’s end-of-season championship against Slovakia’s Dominika Cibulkova.
A surprise finalist, Cibulkova booked her spot in the title match when she fought back from the brink of defeat to overhaul a weary Svetlana Kuznetsova 1-6 7-6 (7-2) 6-4 in a thriller at Singapore’s Indoor Stadium.
Cibulkova lost to Kerber in the round-robin phase last Sunday and will have her work cut out for her beating the German in Sunday?s final after she produced another clinical display against Radwanska.
Kerber dominated Radwanska from the outset, giving the Pole few chances to play her own game as she took control of the baseline rallies and cruised to victory in an hour and a quarter.
“She had an answer for everything. She’s not giving anything for free,” Radwanska said. “That’s what makes her one of the best players in the world and the best this year.”
Unbeaten in four matches this week, Kerber will go into Sunday’s final as a strong favourite as she seeks to add the WTA Finals title to her Australian Open and US Open crowns.
The pair have played each other nine times, with Cibulkova winning the first four and Kerber the last five meetings.
“It’s a little bit weird to play against one opponent twice in one tournament,” Kerber said.
“This never happened before for me but I’m looking forward to play against her.
“The first match here was really tight and close, and she has a lot of confidence from the last two matches she won.”
Voted the WTA’s comeback player of the year after slumping to 66th in the world rankings in February, Cibulkova earned her place in the final the hard way.
She won this month’s Linz Open in Austria to qualify for the elite eight-player event then snuck into the semis on a countback after losing her first two round-robin matches, thanks in part to Kerber who beat Madison Keys in straight sets to allow Cibulkova to go through to the last four.
“There’s a lot of positive emotions,” Cibulkova said after beating Kuznetsova in a match that began slowly but escalated into a nail biter.
“The match wasn’t going my way all the time but I managed to win it, even (when) I was down, even (when) she was playing really good tennis.”
There were some anxious moments for the 27-year-old Cibulkova when she lost four games in a row to trail 4-2 in the deciding set but she rediscovered her form at the perfect time and reeled off the last four games on the trot to seal victory and end Kuznetsova’s own fairytale run.
The oldest woman in the tournament at 31, Kuznetsova had to win the Kremlin Cup in Moscow last week just to qualify for the $7 million event and then won two gruelling three-set encounters to reach the semis.
Battling exhaustion, she lost her final round-robin match against French Open champion Garbine Muguruza on Friday before finally running out of gas against Cibulkova.
“It’s not worth thinking about if I’m tired, if I’m fatigued,” Kuznetsova said. “Whatever it is, I’m not going to make any excuses. I just did all I could and I was a little bit short in the end.”

French authorities Saturday stepped up work to finish demolition of an almost deserted Calais “Jungle” as more than 100 French MPs urged Britain to accept unaccompanied minors who had been living in the squalid migrant camp.
Shortly after 8:00 am (0600 GMT), three huge diggers moved into place on the northern perimeter of the camp, until Tuesday home to 6,000 to 8,000 migrants, to sweep away debris from makeshift dwellings.
Many tents and shacks were ravaged in huge fires which broke out Wednesday at the camp, a stark symbol of Europe’s migrant crisis.
Around a dozen riot police trucks were posted at the camp entrance, where skips were in place to take away piles of debris.
Officials aim to complete the clearance by Monday night and on Saturday morning there was little sign of life save for workmen and the police.
In Paris, more than 100 leftwing lawmakers sent a letter to British Home Secretary Amber Rudd, calling on her government to “immediately” take in unaccompanied minors from the Jungle who want to rejoin relatives in the UK.
The letter, a copy of which was sent to AFP by the deputy president of the National Assembly, Sandrine Mazetier, said 1,500 unaccompanied minors had been placed in safety in the provisional reception centre — a container camp — in Calais.
“(They) are not seeking any favours: they have the right, in line with current international regulations and British law, to go to Britain.
“Their transfer to Britain is urgent. We ask you to take up your responsibilities and to assume your moral duty in turn by immediately organising their arrival.”
Britain has taken in 274 children from the Jungle since mid-October, mostly youngsters with relatives already living in the country.
Britain’s Help Refugees charity estimated that as of late Friday there remained over 1,000 unaccompanied children living in the container camp.
Children who had been told they were headed eventually for Britain to join family already there were getting ready on Saturday, hoping to be on their way later in the day.
Migrants, mainly from Afghanistan, Sudan and Eritrea, flocked to the camp near the northern port of Calais in the hope of making it across the Channel to Britain.
Clare Moseley, founder of British charity Care4Calais, was concerned for those who had left the camp and had dispersed across France.
“We are worried about what happens next — there will be multitude of small camps where conditions are even worse than in the Jungle,” Moseley said.
Many Calais locals fear the Jungle will simply spring back up again once the current clearance operation is over.
Senior regional official Jean-Francois Carenco said Friday more than 2,000 migrants were sleeping on the streets of Paris. But he denied that large numbers had been arriving from Calais over the past few days after slipping through the net.

Vera Sidika is an alumnus of Kenyatta University… nope, she quit so she doesn’t really qualify to be called an alumnus.
Vera studied at Kenyatta University before she quit with only two semesters left for her to complete her course and graduate.
 
Vera has the money, fame and flair but one thing is missing on her profile, a University degree. And this is what Vera regrets the most.
Queen Vee says she has been trying to go back to school to get her degree but her tight schedule hasn’t allowed her.
But why does Vera needs a degree when she’s raking in more money in a single day than most under paid civil servants would ever make in their lifetime??
 
The socialites’ queen says an investment in knowledge always pays the best.
” Wrote Vera Sidika.
 
 
 

Before he came out in public, Joji Baro says he dated a priest but broke up after sometime. In a recent interview with Joji says that he has not dated in years and this makes him feel lonely. He has not been able to hook up with anyone because of his HIV status which scares most people away.
 
Well, apart from dating gay men Joji Baro hooks up with straight men that prefer saying on the low. He says some of these men bash him in public but get cozy in private. He however feels that this cycle should change as he is now looking for a serious partner.
 
This is to help him reduce the suicidal thoughts he gets everytime he is rejected. The gay activist says he has contemplated suicide a couple of times but he never went ahead to fulfill the thoughts. He says as a human being he feels unappreciated and he hopes to fit in after finding true love.

Achola Ngobi comes from a family of ‘old money’; Defense Cabinet Secretary, Raychelle Omamo, is her aunt.
Also Read:
Even before she flew to South Africa to pursue education, Achola studied at the prestigious Pembroke House which follows the British Common Entrance curriculum, and is also one of the oldest international boarding prep schools in Kenya.
 
After Pembroke House, Achola headed to South Africa where she studied at St Anne’s Diocesan College, an expensive private girls’ boarding school situated in the small town of Hilton in the KwaZulu-Natal province.
Just like Pembroke House school, majority of students at St Anne’s Diocesan College are also white, with a rich backgrounds.
 
The school was founded in 1877 to provide education exclusively for white students. After the end of apartheid in South Africa, black students were admitted.
The serenity of St Anne’s Diocesan College tells you students from poor backgrounds have no business there.
 
School fee at St Anne’s Diocesan College is also ridiculously expensive; boarding plus tuition fee per term is 42,660 South African Rand or 313,183 Kenyans shillings. That translates to 170,640 South African Rand or 1.2 million Kenyan Shillings per annum.
 
Achola was an all rounded student during her time at St Anne’s Diocesan College; she won numerous academic awards and served as Vice-Captain for the netball team.
It’s also believed that she met Jomo Kenyatta while in South Africa; her husband attended Hilton College, another prestigious private boarding school for boys also located near Hilton town.
 

Isabel Allende, daughter of Chile’s martyred leader Salvador Allende, said she has decided not to stand for her nation’s presidency, just weeks after announcing she was mulling a run.
“After deep reflection, I have decided not to go forward” with a presidential campaign, Allende told the Mediabanco news agency on Friday.
Allende is a senator and the daughter of former president Salvador Allende, who was overthrown by late dictator Augusto Pinochet in a 1973 coup.
Isabel Allende — the leading name from the left who was considering a presidential run — is not to be confused with her distant relative of the same name who is a best-selling novelist.
Allende said she will focus her efforts on “ensuring unity within the Socialist Party” her late father founded decades ago, alongside other leftist leaders.
The socialist party was in deep crisis after last week’s local elections that gave conservatives with the Chile Vamos group a narrow victory over the ruling coalition of Bachelet’s left-leaning New Majority.
General elections in 2017 will pick a successor for Chile’s socialist President Michelle Bachelet, at a time when the left here is struggling.
Michelle Bachelet, the nation’s first woman president, has been besieged 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.
She served a first term from 2006 to 2010, and — constitutionally barred from immediate re-election — returned in 2014.

Italy’s notorious bureaucracy was blamed Saturday for the death of a pensioner killed when a road bridge collapsed hours after the highway agency asked for its closure on safety grounds.
ANAS, the company which runs the country’s main roads, said it had “repeatedly requested the immediate closure” of the bridge over the SS36 dual carriageway between Milan and Lecco from 2 p.m onwards on Friday afternoon, after one of its staff reported it to be crumbling in parts.
The bridge collapsed just over three hours later under the weight of an articulated lorry that had been given special authorisation to carry an exceptionally heavy load.
Claudio Bertini, 68, who was travelling on the road below, died when his car was crushed by the collapsing bridge. Ten others were injured in the resulting crashes and police said it was remarkable the rush hour accident had not caused more fatalities.
ANAS said the road had not been closed immediately because the provincial authorities had asked for the request to be put in writing, a step that required a formal inspection of the site.
An inspector was on his way to the bridge when it collapsed, ANAS said in a statement.
The province of Lecco denied that it had allowed an obsession with paperwork to compromise public safety.
“ANAS’s account of what happened does not accord with the information we have about what happened,” it said in a statement.
The minister of infrastructure has ordered a review of the accident and a preliminary criminal investigation has been opened.
Italy is famed for its bureaucracy with even the most basic services requiring extensive form filling and red tape regularly cited as a significant barrier to investment and growth.
Employers organisation Confindustria complains that entrepreneurs have to deal with at least ten different authorities and frequently spend as much time on administration as on building their companies.

“You could expect a setback as the ICC started to make more progress,” Bensouda told the NRC daily paper in an interview, published on Saturday.
But “I don’t believe we should feel defeated and that the ICC is going to close up tomorrow,” said Bensouda, in her first reaction to the shock announcements by Burundi, South Africa and the Gambia to leave the Hague-based court.
Last week, Burundi became the first country to declare its intention to leave the ICC, after the court’s prosecutor said she might open a case against the government.
South Africa and Gambia followed suit, raising fears of an exodus of African countries, many of which are founding members of the court.
Bensouda stressed that all countries who currently number among the ICC’s 124 members “are sovereign states.”
“They joined voluntarily and if they withdraw it’s voluntarily as well,” said the Gambian-born Bensouda, to whom Banjul’s decision to leave is said to be a particular blow.
Bensouda again called on the African Union to cooperate with the world war crimes court, set up in 2002 to try the world’s worst crimes.
“I don’t think the AU should close the door (on the court). Eventually we share the same values: peace, security, stability and justice.”
“It’s essential that we keep up prosecutions, inside and out of Africa,” Bensouda said.

The Swedish Academy said on Saturday that Bob Dylan is not obliged to attend the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm, but is required to hold some sort of lecture or even sing a song.
Dylan could provide anything from a short speech, a performance, a video broadcast — or even a song, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Sara Danius, told the public Swedish Radio.
“I hope he will do what he desires to do,” she said, adding that the academy will “do everything it can” to adapt the festivities to his wishes.
Dylan finally broke his silence on Friday, saying he plans to pick up his Nobel prize for literature in Stockholm on December 10, calling it “amazing, incredible”.
“It’s hard to believe,” the US singer-songwriter told Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper on Friday. “Whoever dreams about something like that?”
Asked if he would attend the Nobel prize winners’ banquet, which is hosted by Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf, Dylan said: “Absolutely. If it’s at all possible.”
The 75-year-old was named this year’s laureate on October 13, but a prominent member of the Swedish Academy that awards the prize complained a week later that he had not responded to repeated phone calls.
The academy member, Swedish writer Per Wastberg, accused Dylan of being “impolite and arrogant”, and said it was “unprecedented” that the academy did not know if Dylan intended to pick up his award.
But Danius told TT news agency that Dylan was “humble, friendly and humourous” during a 15-minute phone conversation with him on Tuesday.
Asked why he did not respond to the Academy’s calls, Dylan told the Daily Telegraph: “Well, I’m right here.”
Dylan, whose lyrics have influenced generations of fans, is the first songwriter to win the literature prize.

In one month it will be Emma Morano’s birthday. Though she hasn’t invited anyone, people from around the world are still likely to turn up to celebrate with the last known person alive to have been born in the 19th century.
“I’m 116 years and on 27 November, I’ll be 117,” this alert and chatty lady tells AFP in her room in Verbania, a town in northern Italy on Lake Maggiore.
On a marble-topped chest of drawers stands proudly the Guinness World Records certificate declaring Morano, born in 1899, to be the world’s oldest living person.
There is also a photograph of her and her doctor Carlo Bava holding eggs: the secret to her long life appears to lie in eschewing all received medical wisdom.
“I eat two eggs a day, and that’s it. And cookies. But I do not eat much because I have no teeth,” she says.
The egg habit dates from when she was diagnosed with anaemia at 20 in the wake of World War I and a doctor advised her to eat three a day, two raw and one cooked.
She maintained that regime for 90 years and is believed to have eaten over 100,000 eggs and counting.
“Emma has always eaten very few vegetables, very little fruit. When I met her, she ate three eggs per day, two raw in the morning and then an omelette at noon, and chicken at dinner,” said Bava, who has been her doctor for the past 27 years.
Now she lives mostly on biscuits “and does not want to eat meat because she doesn’t like it anymore and someone told her it causes cancer,” he said.
Morano is not even sure she’ll have a slice of her birthday cake, saying “the last time I ate a little, but then I did not feel good”.
She may still be some way off the previous record, held by France’s Jeanne Calment who lived to be 122, but Morano, the eldest of eight children who has outlived all her younger siblings, knows turning 117 will be an event to celebrate.
“People come. I don’t invite anybody but they come. From America, Switzerland, Austria, Turin, Milan… They come from all over to see me,” she says with an amused smile.
Birthdays aside, Morano is a solitary person. Having left her violent husband in 1938 shortly after the death in infancy of her only son, she lived alone, working in a factory producing jute sacks to support herself.
She clung to her independence, only taking on a full-time caregiver last year, though she has not left her small two-room apartment for 20 years, and has been bed-bound for the last year.
While her mind is alert, she is very deaf, speaks with difficulty and does not see well enough to watch television, spending her time instead either sleeping or snacking.
Bava puts her longevity party down to genetics — Morano’s mother died at 91 and at least two of her sisters lived to be over 100 — but said having a daily routine and her great strength of character had also likely played their parts.
“She is a very determined person. She has never wanted to go to hospital, she’s never received any particular (health) care. She’s suffered from a bit of bronchitis, had a (blood) transfusion, and some stitches, but always at home.”
“Now she’s well, she’s very well, but it’s clear she lives every day in a very, very precarious equilibrium,” he said.
Bava admits he feels a bit like “the keeper of the Tower of Pisa, which has been leaning for centuries. The day it topples over, someone will be held responsible.
“When Emma dies, people will hold me accountable”.

Sometimes in November 2015, singer Sara Nanaa cancelled her wedding after she came across footage of her fiancé eating the forbidden fruit with one of her best friends.
She cancelled her wedding which was underway after her sister showed her pictures, videos and audio recordings of her fiancé and one of her best friends having sex at a bachelor’s party organized by his friends. (Her sister stumbled upon the footage just moments before the wedding).
 
The Kikaragosi singer has since moved on with her life; but not without adapting radical changes to her life.
Sara Nanaa has since accepted Christ to her life, she now posting inspirational quotes from the Holy book on social media.
Nanaa posted on Facebook.
She has also vowed to take a celibate path; she says she will only have sex when she gets married.

President Francois Hollande acknowledged Saturday France’s “broad responsibility” for the internment of thousands of Roma by the World War II Vichy regime and in the early months of the post-war government.
“The day has come, and this truth must be told,” Hollande said on the first presidential visit to the main internment camp for Roma, located in Montreuil-Bellay, central France.
“The (French) Republic acknowledges the suffering of travelling people who were interned and admits that it bears broad responsibility,” he said.
Roma, also known as gypsies, were brutally persecuted in the Holocaust, in parallel with the systematic murder of Jews. Estimates of how many died vary widely, between 220,000 and half a million.
Between 6,000 and 6,500 Roma were interned in 31 camps in France under the Vichy regime, the government set up in France — but under de-facto Nazi control — after France surrendered to Germany in 1940.
The regime fell in the wake of the June 1944 Allied invasion of Normandy and General Charles de Gaulle set up a provisional government.
The biggest of the Roma internment camps was Montreuil-Bellay, where more than 2,000 were confined between November 1941 and January 1945. About a hundred of them died.
The camp was also used to intern a number of homeless people from the city of Nantes. Some Roma remained interned in French camps until 1946.
“Nearly all families of travelling people have at least one relative who passed through Montreuil-Bellay,” Hollande said.
“A country, in this case ours, is always bigger for recognising its own history,” he said.
Survivors and descendants of the victims were among a crowd of more than 500 people who attended Saturday’s ceremonies, held some seven decades after the last interned Roma were freed.
“It was important for us to have this recognition. It affects thousands and thousands” of Roma families, said Fernande Delage, head of the France Liberte Voyage NGO.
“It’s late, but better late than never,” he added.
Lucien Violet, a 69-year-old whose parents were held in Montreuil-Bellay, also attended the ceremony.
“This is the first president to pay homage to travelling people. We feel genuinely moved by his presence,” he said.
“Our families have suffered enormously and we will never forget, even though there is forgiveness.”
For many, returning to the site of the camp threw up difficult memories.
“It hurts, it really hurts to come back here,” admitted another survivor called Henriette Deschelotte.
“We did what we could but we were very unhappy,” she said.
Sandrine Renaire, who heads the Friends of Montreuil-Bellay gypsy camp (AMCT), said her family were terrified of leaving the nearby town of Saumur for they would be rounded up.
They “never left Saumur out of fear of being caught on the roads and locked up”, she said.
“They were deprived of their freedom, which is the worst thing that could have happened to them.”
At the site, a commemorative installation has been set up. Created by ceramics artist Armelle Benoit, it consists of a portico of eight columns engraved with the names of the 473 affected families.
At the ceremony, Hollande threw his weight behind parliamentary moves to scrap a 1969 law that defenders of minorities say is discriminatory.
The legislation traces its roots to a 1912 regulation which sought to push Roma to settle down by requiring “nomads” to have special ID cards.
In 1940, the law was changed, ostensibly as a result of the war, requiring travellers to have a fixed address in a move which Hollande said was “the result of distrust fed by ancestral fears, prejudices and ignorance”.
Three decades later, it was replaced in 1969 by the requirement for “travelling people” to have a specific set of papers and name a district as their home base — legislation which the parliament is now likely to repeal.
“It will be, I hope, settled by the parliament so that travelling people no longer have to carry this booklet, so that they can be citizens just like everyone else,” Hollande said.

Air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition fighting rebels in Yemen killed 17 civilians in a battleground southwestern town on Saturday, the insurgents said.
Rescuers were still pulling bodies from the rubble after the raids hit residential buildings in Salo southeast of Yemen’s third city Taez, rebel-controlled media said, giving a toll of 17 dead and seven wounded.
Most of those killed were women, sabanews.net said, reporting four strikes hit three residential buildings, “completely destroying them”.
A doctor at the town’s public hospital said it had received the bodies of 15 dead and was treating seven wounded.
There was no immediate comment from the coalition, which launched a military campaign against the Iran-backed Huthi rebels and their allies in March last year to support President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi’s government.
But a local Yemeni official loyal to the Saudi-backed government said the coalition air strikes had hit three adjacent homes by mistake.
“All those in the houses were killed,” he told AFP, adding that a child and seven women were among the dead.
The coalition has come under mounting international criticism for the high civilian death toll from its bombing campaign.
An October 8 strike that killed more than 140 people attending a funeral ceremony for the father of a rebel leader in the capital Sanaa drew condemnation even from close Western allies.
The coalition launched a swift investigation into that attack and acknowledged that one of its warplanes had “wrongly targeted” the funeral based on “incorrect information”.
It announced disciplinary measures, compensation for the families of victims and allowed the most seriously wounded to be evacuated on board an Omani flight.
The town of Salo has been the scene of fierce fighting for months as pro-Hadi forces attempt to advance towards Taez, where the government garrison is almost entirely surrounded by the rebels and dependent on a single supply line from the south.
The Shiite Huthi rebels have been attempting to block the advance, which would allow reinforcements to be brought directly along the main road from the government’s headquarters in second city Aden to the south.
Thousands of people have been forced from their homes by the fighting.
Rebel media said those killed in Saturday’s air strikes were among them.
Nationwide, three million Yemenis have been displaced since the Saudi-led intervention began.
Nearly 7,000 people have been killed, mostly civilians, and more than 35,000 wounded.

Political concerns over the North Korean regime are stopping vital relief aid from reaching the victims of a major flood there, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said Saturday.
Nearly 70,000 people are estimated to have lost their homes in disastrous flooding in North Hamgyong province in August and September that claimed more than 130 lives.
Governments need “to put politics aside and recognise that this is a humanitarian tragedy,” IFRC’s communication manager for the Asia Pacific told reporters in Beijing following a trip to the region, adding that it was “difficult” for many to separate the issue of sanctions from the need for aid.
Last month, the Red Cross began an emergency campaign for funds, but so far the response has been “disappointing”, only meeting 25 percent of its target, he said.
“It’s not nearly enough to support the operation over the coming months.”
While the North Korean government has had made progress building new housing for the flood’s victims, many are still living in temporary shelters.
“Winter is going to be the main challenge,” Fuller said, showing footage of homeless families building fires from bits of kindling and fetching water from shallow streams.
As the season changes, temperatures are expected to dip as low as -15 Celsius:
“It’s not a situation where people can continue to live under plastic sheeting,” he said.
IFRC had intended to use the requested funds to supply basic items such as bedding, winter clothing and fuel to 7,000 families, Fuller added.
But due to the shortfall he said they would not be able to provide all that.
The floods along the Tumen River, which partially marks the border with China and Russia, tore through villages, washing away buildings and leaving hundreds of thousands in urgent need of food and shelter.
Other aid agencies have also said that raising money for humanitarian assistance in North Korea has become an increasingly difficult task given the global condemnation of its nuclear weapons programme.
Some donors have questioned how the North can afford to develop and test nuclear weapons, but still need financial help to alleviate the suffering of flood victims.
The impoverished and isolated North is vulnerable to natural disasters, especially floods, due partly to deforestation and poor infrastructure.
At least 169 people were killed by a massive rainstorm in the summer of 2012.

You’ve probably seen his face Trending across the Internet for the last few days or so.
His name is Marjanein Ndere Indahaso , a selfie-obsessed, genial-looking young lad who, at first glance, appears totally innocent and easy to relate with until you learn of the despicable horrors he’s being accused of committing.
Contrary to the come-hither countenance that his Instagram page projects, Abubakar, as he’s also known as on Facebook, is not the happy-go-lucky college kid you might mistakenly think he is.
Indahaso is a killer. And not just a killer caught in a sudden maddening rage. But a calculating ghoul who planned the premeditated death of his little cousin- and then ate her up.
In October 19, 2016 at 2am in High View Estate Phase 11 in Ngumo, it’s being alleged that the 3-rd year student at Strathmore University crept into his auntie’s bedroom, woke her up, knocked her out and stabbed her severally with a knife and then snatched her two-year old daughter (his niece), grabbed her and left the room with her.

After ensuring that he’d locked up the little girl’s mother in her room, the man is said to have proceeded to bust open his little niece’s head, cracking her skull, eating her brains and slurping up her dripping blood. Like a vampire.
In what is described like a scene straight out of a Quentin Tarantino flick, Idahaso drank up his own cousin’s blood as she lay helpless, mangled and decapitated. Her mother screaming her lungs out from the other room.
This shocking act has thrown his family into disarray and caught his friends and associates in utter disbelief.

Idahaso, who goes by the moniker Marjan Andele Idahaso on Instagram, appears to have loved life and social moments as 90% of his photos are of him and his pals either in school or in some outdoor activities
Also,he calls the niece he butchered and ate up his in one of his morbid Instagram photos.
Under several of his photos, his shocked – and enraged – followers have left many angry comments insulting him, questioning his motives, expressing their disbelief and shock.
As we speak, sources tell us that the Strathmore University student is currently being held at the Milimani Police station.
Ghafla contacted Strathmore University who told us that they’ve not heard of any such incident involving their student and asked us to email to their communication team.
Our email has still not yet been replied to.
But in a statement published by , the University reacted as thus,
The suspect remains in Police custody.
Below are some of the Instagram reactions from his friends and followers.

Hideki Matsuyama maintained a three-shot lead after a “satisfying” third round of the WGC-HSBC Champions in Shanghai Saturday, but Rory McIlroy’s chances all but melted away on the back nine.
Saturday is known as “moving day” in golf parlance but in the case of McIlroy, who started the day six behind the Japanese world number 10, it was in the wrong direction.
The world number three got to the turn at three-under for the round, including an astonishing birdie at the long eighth hole.
But the FedEx Cup champion saw the course claw all his gains back before birdies at 16 and 18 gave him some consolation.
McIlroy finished at nine under in a tie for eighth place after a 70, but is now eight shots adrift of Japan’s world number 10.
Matsuyama sprayed 19 birdies and six bogeys all over the course with memorable attacking golf during his first 36 holes, but he reined in his aggressive instincts Saturday to card a bogey-free four-under 68 and move to 17-under par.
“The first two days, making lots of birdies was a lot of fun,” the quietly spoken 24-year-old told reporters through an interpreter.
“But today, when you’re in a position to win, playing smart and making no bogeys was very satisfying.”
Matsuyama started the day three shots clear of Russell Knox and maintained the margin courtesy of a crucial birdie at the final hole.
“It was a big, big birdie to take the lead from two strokes to three,” said Matsuyama. “I had 248 yards to the pin. Faded a three-wood in there.”
The first Japanese player to make the world’s top 10 since Jumbo Ozaki in 1998 is bidding to become the first Asian to win a World Golf Championships event.
But he will face a fierce battle from defending champion Knox, who will make his own piece of history if he can be the first player to retain the Old Tom Morris Cup on Sunday.
“I’m not going to give up my title without a big fight tomorrow. I look forward to every minute and see what happens,” said Knox.
McIlroy had seemed ready for a charge when he got off to a fast start with birdies at the second and sixth holes.
His third birdie, at the par-five eighth, came under the most remarkable of circumstances. At that point it seemed as if it would be the Northern Irishman’s day.
Going for the green in two, McIlroy slashed the ball so far right that it cannoned into trees and across a cart path.
Faced with a tiny gap in thicket and no green to work with, McIlroy somehow fizzed a low wedge through the branches hard into the bank of a stream guarding the green and watched it hop up obligingly onto the putting surface.
He calmly rolled in the 15-footer for birdie and allowed himself to laugh, knowing he had dodged a bullet.
But the course bit back after the turn as bogeys at 11 and 12 were followed by another at 15 before his finishing flourish left him in a six-way tie for eighth place.

Women’s tennis has entered a new era no longer dominated by Serena Williams, 18-time Grand Slam winner Chris Evert said Saturday.
“I don’t think nobody will dominate in the near future anyway like Serena Williams, and kudos to her, it shows how great she was as a player, but I think now this is how we’re going to form some new rivalry where the girls will have to play it out,” she said at the WTA Finals in Singapore.
“We’re going to see new winners every single week, different winners every single week. The variety and depth, different age groups, different styles of play, so I think we’re entering a new era,” Evert told reporters at a joint press conference with fellow legend Martina Navratilova.
The elite season-ending competition has been the most evenly matched in recent history with American powerhouse Williams skipping the event due to a shoulder injury and Russian Maria Sharapova still serving out a doping suspension for the banned medication meldonium.
Navratilova, who also won 18 singles Grand Slams in her career, said it was “not quite” a changing of the guard but that the game is now much closer — though players still need to watch out for when Williams returns.
“There’s a saying that when you injure a king, you have to make sure to kill [him] because they have a habit of coming back,” she said with a laugh.
Asked about Sharapova’s return next year, Navratilova said: “Well she didn’t dominate when she was playing but top four, absolutely.”
She defended Sharapova over her doping ban, pointing out that meldonium was a drug that had been allowed for many years.
“It was pretty clear that she wasn’t meaning to cheat as I’ve said many times before. She took a drug that was legal for so many years…
“The price that she’s paid and is still paying is bigger than her mistake but that’s how it goes. Now she has an opportunity to come back,” Navratilova added.

How much jogging can one person do? On holiday? In Rome?
An alert Italian customs officer asking those questions has exposed the latest ingenious ploy of Latin American drugs traffickers: replacing the shock-absorbing gel in running shoes with liquid cocaine.
“Only an expert would have been able to tell the liquid wasn’t the usual gel,” Italy’s financial police said Saturday following the detention of a Brazilian national on charges of smuggling seven kilograms (15 pounds) of the narcotic into Italy.
The arrest followed a random check on passengers arriving at Rome’s main airport from Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Officers became suspicious when the man was found to have packed six pairs of sports shoes for what was supposed to be a short break in the Italian capital.
Closer examination of the shoes uncovered a drugs haul which would have had a street value of two million euros ($2.2m), the financial police said.

About a fortnight ago, Zaheer Jhanda’s wife, Aaliyah Zaheer, posted a photo of her husband’s second wife, Faith Mutua aka Amber Ray, at a witchdoctor’s shrine as she accused her of using black magic to ‘steal’ her husband from her. The photo was posted on Facebook group, Kilimani Mums Nairobi Uncensored.
 
The aspiring MP has since come out to defend his second wife against claims by his first wife; Jhanda told the Nairobian that the photos were from a movie scene and that he was there when they were taken.
 
The wannabe MP also made it clear that he was a Muslim and that he was allowed to marry up to four wives; he explained that everyone knew Faith Mutua was his legally married wife. He however revealed his first wife had refused to acknowledge the fact that the socialite was now her co-wife.
Jhanda told The Nairobian.
 

Twenty-five people were killed, six of them gendarmes, in two days of violence around the town of Bambari in the troubled Central African Republic, the UN force MINUSCA said Saturday.
Six police and four civilians were killed in an ambush by armed men Friday morning, while on Thursday, 15 people died in fighting on the town’s outskirts between the former Muslim Seleka militia and Christian vigilante groups known as “anti-balaka” (anti-machete), it said in a statement.
In a further incident, anti-balaka fighters on Friday attacked eight members of MINUSCA as they were heading to Bambari airport, the force said. A seven-year-old child was injured.
The UN force said there had been a “rise in tension in certain regions,” citing “confrontation between armed elements of the ex-Seleka and anti-balaka” groups.
It called on the armed groups to end “the cycle of attack and reprisal.”
Bambari lies in central CAR, about 250 kilometres (150 miles) northeast of the capital Bangui.
The bloodshed is the latest bout of violence to strike the CAR, a former French colony that is one of the world’s poorest countries.
It occurred in the runup to the formal end on Monday of a French military mission, Operation Sangaris, sent to help the UN stabilise the country.
MINUSCA is seeking to support the administration of President Faustin-Archange Touadera, who was elected in February.
The CAR’s descent into sectarian bloodshed began after the March 2013 ouster of president Francois Bozize, a Christian, by the mostly Muslim Seleka rebel alliance.
This triggered revenge attacks and a spiral of atrocities between Christian and Muslim groups in which thousands were slaughtered and around a tenth of the population of 4.5 million were displaced.
Earlier this month, 30 people were killed and 57 wounded when Seleka fighters staged an attack in the central town of Kaga Bandoro.
A few days later, 11 people were shot dead in a camp for displaced people in Ngakobo, northeast of Bangui.
On October 24, four civilians were killed when protests against the UN peacekeepers, called by a coalition of civil society groups angered by the rise of armed militias, turned violent.

Two suicide bombings rocked Nigeria’s northeast city of Maiduguri on Saturday, killing at least nine people and injuring scores of others, emergency services said.
One explosion happened outside a gas station, while the other was near the Bakassi camp for internally displaced persons (IDP), underscoring the continued threat from Boko Haram jihadists who are suspected of being behind the attacks.
“Two suicide bombers riding in motorised rickshaws this morning detonated their explosives 10 minutes apart, with one of them targeting the Bakassi IDP camp on the outskirts of the city,” Mohammed Kanar, spokesman for Nigeria Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), said.
“One of the bombers tried to enter the Bakassi IDP camp but the explosives detonated at the gates, killing four people,” Kanar said.
“The explosives on the other one detonated minutes later as he rode with two other people towards the (Bakassi) IDP camp near the fuel depot.”
Following the blast, one of the yellow rickshaws burst apart in half, while the ground was littered with metal shards.
“Nine persons lost their lives with twenty-four persons injured and evacuated to various hospitals,” NEMA said in a statement posted on Twitter.
Boko Haram has devastated northeast Nigeria in its quest to create an Islamist state, killing over 20,000 people and displacing 2.6 million from their homes.
Since taking up arms against the Nigerian government in 2009, Boko Haram has disrupted trade routes and farms.
Now nearly 50,000 children are facing death by starvation if they don?t get food and almost 250,000 more are severely malnourished in Borno state, according to UNICEF.
?Nigeria is facing the worst humanitarian crisis on the African continent,? Peter Lundberg, acting United Nations Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator, warned last week.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has led a successful offensive against the insurgents since coming into office last year, but Boko Haram is still capable of carrying out deadly attacks.
In October, Boko Haram attacked a town near Chibok, where in 2014 it kidnapped over 200 schoolgirls, drawing global attention to the insurgency.
Later this month, the jihadists claimed that they killed 20 soldiers in “fierce clashes” in the Ghashghar area of northeastern Nigeria.
The violence is spilling into neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon, with Niger early in October declaring two days of national mourning after 22 soldiers were killed in an attack blamed on the jihadists against a camp sheltering almost 4,000 refugees.

Chinese vessels have left the contested Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, a Philippine official said Saturday, less than a week after President Rodrigo Duterte visited Beijing pledging closer ties.
The firebrand leader used the trip to vaunt his move away from traditional ally the United States in favour of Beijing — which was previously at loggerheads with Manila over the maritime dispute.
China took control of the Scarborough Shoal, 230 kilometres (140 miles) from the main Philippine island of Luzon, in 2012, driving Filipino fishermen away from the rich fishing ground, sometimes using water cannons.
In a case brought by former president Benigno Aquino, the Philippines won a resounding victory at an international tribunal earlier this year over Beijing’s extensive maritime claims in the area, infuriating the Asian giant.
But Duterte has made a point of not flaunting the ruling and President Xi Jingping told the Philippine leader on his recent visit that there was no reason for hostility and difficult topics of discussion “could be shelved temporarily”.
“There is no sign of Chinese coastguard vessels in the area. While we do not have any official explanation for this, it sends a positive signal regarding relations,” Duterte’s spokesman Ernesto Abella told AFP Saturday, referring to the shoal.
“This is a welcome development especially for Filipino fisherfolk.”
Duterte had hinted at the possibility of a Chinese withdrawal directly upon his return from Beijing last week, saying: “We’ll just wait for a few more days. We might be able to return to Scarborough Shoal.”
On Friday, Defence Minister Delfin Lorenzana said: “If the Chinese ships have left then it means our fishermen can resume fishing in the area.”
However the foreign affairs department said they had yet to verify that Chinese vessels had left the shoal.
A report by television network GMA7 said fishermen from the northern province of Pangasinan had returned to shore Saturday with “a huge load of big species of fish” caught at Scarborough Shoal.

Europe’s poorest country Moldova — politically torn between former Soviet master Russia and the West — has seen its economy ravaged by rampant corruption and a string of money laundering and theft scandals.
As the country prepares for presidential elections on Sunday, observers from the Council of Europe recently issued an unflattering pre-vote report.
“One of the main reasons for the long-standing political crisis in Moldova is the lack of confidence in the state institutions resulting from multiple corruption scandals,” they said in a statement late September.
Just last month 15 judges were detained on suspicion of participating in “a criminal scheme that allowed the laundering of $20 billion from Russia bypassing the Moldovan banking system,” according to the Moldovan Anti-Corruption Center (CNA).
Between 2010 and 2014 the judgespassed about 50 rulings” that authorised repayment of nonexistent debts using fake documents, according to the agency tasked with fighting money laundering.
Several bankers including the former deputy governor of the central bank have also been targeted in the investigation.
The latest scandal comes 18 months after Moldovans discovered that $1 billion (915 million euros) — equivalent to 15 percent of the ex-Soviet republic’s GDP — had gone missing from three of the country’s banks in a massive fraud.
“Moldova has become the regional launderer for money of dubious origin,” said a recent report published by Transparency International Moldova.
The report’s author, former finance minister Veaceslav Negruta, describes a “complicity” between the banking and justice systems in giving a semblance of legality to fraudulent transactions.
This has incorporated legislative changes, including to the criminal code, and a “slackening of monitoring of accounts belonging to non-residents,” carried out by the very officials who are supposed to fight money laundering, Negruta told AFP.
He said the judges who have been arrested “did not act independently. They were given protection and coordination and they were mere cogs in this system.”
Igor Botan, an analyst with Moldovan think tank Adept, questioned the willingness of Chisinau to really tackle corruption, saying the recent arrests were only carried out to “impress the West to convince them to resume financial assistance.”
Council of Europe observers named “the lack of results in the fight against corruption” as one of the “long-standing serious concerns” which transcend Moldova’s political division between pro-Russia and pro-Europe groups.
Negruta called for both Moldovans and the West to pressure Chisinau to conduct a thorough investigation into the disappearance of the billion dollars, a scandal that has been dubbed the “theft of the century.”
He also denounced the recent decision by the authorities to treat this sum as public debt, which he sees as an attempt to ensure the whole affair is “forgotten.”
If the burden of the debt had not been placed on Moldovans, the central bank and bank monitoring authorities “would certainly be more motivated to try to recoup this billion,” he said.
In June, former prime minister Vlad Filat was sentenced to nine years in prison for receiving $260 million in bribes as part of this fraud scheme.
But according to an audit done by US firm Kroll, responsibilities lie elsewhere. A Moldovan billionaire, Ilan Shor, suspected to have been the brain behind this fraud, was briefly detained in May 2015 and placed under house arrest, but the case has not been sent to court so far.
The EU representative in Moldova Pirkka Tapiola reaffirmed that Brussels had suspended all financial support to Moldova after discovering the theft and will not resume giving money until an agreement is sealed with the International Monetary Fund over reforming the country’s financial system.
It has taken several months to negotiate the agreement and the IMF executive board will meet on November 7 to consider it.
Tapiola said the European Union has put together reform commitments to modernise Moldova and give it financial support.
“But there is one thing you cannot import: political will.”

India’s captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni won the toss and chose to bat in the fifth and final one-day international against New Zealand in Visakhapatnam on Saturday.
With the series tied at 2-2, the hosts have made two changes to their starting lineup from their previous loss in Ranchi on Wednesday.
Debutant off-spinner Jayant Yadav and medium-pacer Jasprit Bumrah will replace Dhawal Kulkarni and Hardik Pandya.
The Kane Williamson-led New Zealand, who are eyeing their first ODI series victory in India, have made just one change with batsman Corey Anderson replacing Anton Devcich.
Teams
India: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (captain), Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane, Rohit Sharma, Manish Pandey, Kedar Jadhav, Jasprit Bumrah, Axar Patel, Amit Mishra, Jayant Yadav, Umesh Yadav
New Zealand: Kane Williamson (captain), Martin Guptill, Tom Latham, Ross Taylor, James Neesham, Corey Anderson, BJ Watling, Mitchell Santner, Tim Southee, Trent Boult, Ish Sodhi
Umpires: CK Nandan (IND) and Bruce Oxenford (AUS)
TV umpire: Chettithody Shamshuddin (IND)
Match referee: Richie Richardson (WIS)
Reserve umpire: Nitin Menon (IND)

Andrea Dovizioso took pole position on Saturday for the Malaysia MotoGP as fellow Italian Valentino Rossi helped his own chances of finishing second in the world championship by storming to the front row.
Ducati’s Dovizioso clocked a 2min 11.485secs lap for his second pole of the season on a newly repaved Sepang circuit that riders complained was taking too long to dry after Malaysia’s tropical rains.
“I’m really happy to make a pole position because the conditions were difficult,” said Dovizioso, who pitted amid qualifying for a tyre switch that confirmed the pole.
“I was able to improve on the last lap with the hard tyre and … was able to go much faster. So I’m really happy about that speed.”
“It wasn’t easy but we did a great job.”
With Honda’s Marc Marquez of Spain having clinched the MotoGP crown two weeks ago in Japan, Sunday is set up for a contest between Rossi and Yamaha teammate Jorge Lorenzo for runner-up honours in the world championship.
The 37-year-old legend Rossi leads the Spaniard by 24 points with two races left.
In the frantic late stages of qualifying on Saturday, Rossi leap-frogged Lorenzo into second position, finishing just 0.246 behind Dovizioso.
It was a far better result for Rossi than in Australia the previous week, when he managed only 15th on the grid yet still stormed to a second-place finish behind winner Cal Crutchlow of Honda.
“Everybody is hoping for a dry race tomorrow because we will be able to see a good fight,” Rossi said.
“It’s not the normal conditions,” he said of the slow pace of drying in some spots.
“So anything can happen tomorrow.”
Lorenzo, the 2015 world champ, rounds out the front row, while Marquez leads the second line after finishing fourth in qualifying despite battling gastroenteritis for days.
No rider has been as successful at Sepang as Rossi, who has won here six times.
But the nine-time world champion has not won in Malaysia since 2010, which was also the last year he took the MotoGP world title.
Track temperatures have been moderate this week, but can top 50 degrees centigrade (122 Fahrenheit) — straining both man and machine.
The tropical humidity and sudden heavy downpours also can pose control issues.
Riders had to contend with a heavy rain Saturday that soaked the track before final qualifying got going and were still adapting to the repaving.
“We have to work in these conditions, but starting in the front row is really good,” Rossi said.
Modifications to some turns also have made it a learning process this week, with several riders going down at various points.
Track officials said all the changes were aimed at improving run-off and tyre grip.
But some riders have complained in particular about the difficulty negotiating the modified hairpin final curve, which now slopes away from the direction of the turn.
Lorenzo called the curve “strange” but praised the repaving overall for resulting in “excellent” tyre grip.

In her column on Daily Nation, Njoki Chege was utterly dumbstruck by Boniface Mwangi’s act of valor; the Right Activist has been embroiled in a bitter lawsuit with the DP over defamation.
Boniface claimed the DP had a hand in the brutal murder of businessman Jacob Juma, and Arap Samoei slapped him with a lawsuit for tainting his name.
 
Njoki wrote in part.
 
City Girl also downplayed claims that Boniface is a gun for hire to ‘finish’ certain people; this was in response to recent claims by Uasin Gishu Governor Jackson Mandago and Kapseret MP Oscar Sudi who claimed the activist was being financed by some leaders from Mount Kenya to derail DP Ruto’s 2022 presidential ambitions.
Mr. Mandago said while speaking in Eldoret on Monday October 24.
 
 

To say Kunal Nayyar looks up to his wife would be an understatement — he barely reaches the beauty queen’s shoulder when she puts on stiletto heels for the red carpet.
But the “Big Bang Theory” star, who measures 5ft 7in (170 centimeters) — three inches less than former Miss India Neha Kapur — has no reason for “short man syndrome.”
Towering astride the entertainment industry as one of the world’s best paid actors, the 35-year-old British-Indian has become one of the biggest celebrities in Hollywood.
“I feel like the tallest guy in the room,” he tells AFP in an interview to promote his latest project, a starring part in DreamWorks Animation’s “Trolls” alongside Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick.
“Maybe I’m the short guy who got the beautiful woman, I don’t know. I have no qualms about it. She’s not only a beautiful person, she’s also an amazing human being.”
Nayyar has good reason for his easy self-confidence, having seen his salary bloom from $100,000 per episode to a reported $800,000 for his role in “The Big Bang Theory,” known by its dedicated fans as “BBT.”
He is making around $22 million a year, according to Forbes, making him the world’s fourth highest paid television actor, a short distance behind three of his fellow cast members.
There has been much speculation over whether season 10 of BBT will be the last, and while Nayyar says he’s “not ready to say goodbye yet,” he is already looking forward, with plans to star in Bollywood.
Outside of the show, he recently took on a starring part in Jesse Eisenberg’s acclaimed play “The Spoils” and has a successful book — “not a memoir” — in stores, called “Yes, My Accent Is Real.”
“Trolls,” inspired by the fuzzy-headed dolls popular in the early 1990s, is set for release in the US on November 4.
Ostensibly for children, it follows Poppy and Branch on their mission to rescue their friends from the Bergens, giants who believe the only way to lift their melancholy is to eat the cute, colorful trolls.
Nayyar plays one of the captives, an endearing little troll called Guy Diamond who refuses to wear clothes and farts glitter as a means of spreading joy.
When he talks about the film’s message that “humanity is about positivity and love,” he comes across like his character — disarmingly animated.
“It’s a film for both kids and adults and the music is incredible… And the world looks beautiful — the hair on the trolls, the glitter on Guy Diamond, the quality,” he enthuses.
Born in London and brought up in New Delhi, Nayyar moved to the US at 18, initially to pursue a business degree at the University of Portland, Oregon.
He was already on BBT when he met Kapur on a trip to India and married her there in 2011, in a lavish six-day ceremony involving white horses and 1,000 guests.
The couple were dubbed “Beauty and the Geek,” irritating Nayyar, who admits he gets frustrated by the media conflating him with Raj, his shy, nerdish character on the sitcom.
“Trolls” comes out four days before America gives serious consideration to electing Donald Trump, a populist presidential candidate who has polarized the public with his rhetoric on Muslims, Mexicans and immigration.
“As an immigrant, I am beginning to seriously worry — if Trump gets elected does that mean I could get deported and no more Raj?” he tweeted a few days before his interview with AFP.
But the actor — again, like his troll character — is an optimist at heart and clarifies that he was being “glib.”
“I think the world is becoming a smaller place and I really do believe in the bottom of my heart — and this may sound trivial to some people — that good always overcomes evil,” he tells AFP.
“That’s why the universe, the world, is where it is today. A lot of bad things have happened in the past, in many different generations. Our parents survived world wars. I think we’re going to be okay.”

Chris Woakes and Adil Rashid shared 99 runs in the ninth wicket partnership to give England a vital 24-run first innings lead over Bangladesh in the second Test in Dhaka on Saturday.
Bangladesh took the last two wickets in six balls after new ball was available, wrapping up England?s first innings for 244 runs on the stroke of the tea break on the second day.
Woakes made 46 while Rashid added an unbeaten 44 to lift England from a precarious 144-8, giving them what looked like an unlikely lead after five wickets fell in the morning session.
Their die-hard batting overshadowed the bowling heroics of Bangladesh’s teenage off-spinner Mehedi Hasan who finished with 6-82, his second five-wicket haul in as many matches.
Mehedi broke the partnership when he forced an edge from Woakes at slip and five balls later, left-arm spinner Taijul Islam, who claimed 3-65, wrapped up England’s innings with the wicket of Steven Finn.
England’s innings could have ended a little earlier if Woakes was not given a reprieve when Sabbir Rahman had him caught by Mahmudullah for 38 with a full toss delivery.
Replay confirmed the ball was above the waist prompting the umpires to call Woakes back.
Resuming on 50-3, England found themselves in deep trouble in the morning session before Joe Root offered some resistance with 56 off 122 balls and Jonny Bairstow, who made 24, gave him some support in their 45-run sixth wicket stand.
Mehedi, who claimed seven wickets in Bangladesh’s 22-run loss in the first Test, including 6-80 in a single innings, again drew first blood on the second day of the second Test, bowling overnight batsman Moeen Ali for 10 in the third over.
Taijul removed Ben Stokes, the man of the match in the first Test, for a duck two overs later as Mominul Haque took a diving catch at forward short leg.
Root and Bairstow resurrected England from a wobbly 69-5 before Mehedi returned for his second spell of the day to strike in the first ball and ended their partnership.
He hit Bairstow plumb in front and the batsman left the crease without waiting to review the leg-before decision.
Debutant Zafar Ansari survived a catch on the fifth ball he faced but could contribute just 13 before Mehedi forced him to offer a catch at slip to Shuvagata Hom to complete his five-wicket haul.
Taijul provided Bangladesh with a huge breakthrough when he hit Root plumb in his back foot to end his long fight and expose England’s tail.

Iraqi paramilitary forces battled the Islamic State group southwest of Mosul on Sunday, the second day of an operation to cut jihadist supply lines between the city and neighbouring Syria.
Tens of thousands of Iraqi troops and Kurdish peshmerga fighters have been advancing on Mosul from the north, east and south after the launch on October 17 of a vast offensive to retake IS’s last stronghold in the country.
After standing largely on the sidelines in the first days of the assault, forces from the Hashed al-Shaabi — a paramilitary umbrella organisation dominated by Iran-backed Shiite militias — began a push on Saturday towards the west of Mosul.
The ultimate aim is the recapture of Tal Afar, a town west of the city, and the cutting of jihadist supply lines between Mosul and Syria, but the Hashed still has significant ground to cover.
In a series of statements on Sunday, the Hashed’s media office said it had retaken two villages, cleared another area and entered several more.
Al-Imraini, one of the two villages the Hashed said it recaptured, is 45 kilometres (27 miles) from Tal Afar, according to the media office.
The drive toward Tal Afar could bring the fighting perilously close to the ancient city of Hatra, a UNESCO world heritage site, and the ruins of Nimrud — two archeological sites that have previously been vandalised by IS.
The involvement of Shiite militias in the Mosul operation has been a source of contention, though the Hashed’s top commanders insist they do not plan to enter the largely Sunni city.
Iraqi Kurds and Sunni Arab politicians have opposed their involvement, as has Turkey which has a military presence east of Mosul despite repeated demands by Baghdad for the forces to be withdrawn.
Relations between the Hashed and the US-led coalition fighting IS are also tense, but the paramilitaries enjoy widespread support among members of Iraq’s Shiite majority.
The Hashed has been a key force in Iraq’s campaign to retake areas seized by IS in mid-2014, when the jihadists took control of large parts of Syria and Iraq and declared a cross-border “caliphate”.
But the paramilitaries have been repeatedly accused of human rights violations during the course of the war against IS, including summary killings, kidnappings and destruction of property.
Tal Afar was a Shiite-majority town of mostly ethnic Turkmens before the Sunni extremists of IS overran it in 2014, and its recapture is a main goal of Shiite militia forces.
The Sunday fighting came a day after Iraq announced the recapture of Al-Shura, an area south of Mosul with a long history as a militant bastion that has been the target of fighting for more than a week.
Iraq’s Joint Operations Command announced “the complete liberation of Al-Shura,” saying that security forces advancing from four different sides had linked up in the area, which is north of Qayyarah base, the main hub for the southern front.
The US-led coalition — which has been assisting federal forces and Kurdish peshmerga with air strikes, training and advisers for two years — said Friday that Iraqi forces were observing a pause in the two-week-old offensive.
In Bartalla, a Christian town just east of Mosul, army and counter-terrorism forces were consolidating their positions, unloading cases of weapons from trucks and organising their ammunition stocks.
More than 17,600 people have fled their homes toward government-held areas since the Mosul operation began, the International Organization for Migration said on Sunday.
Numbers are expected to soar as Iraqi forces close in on the city, which is home to more than a million people.
The UN says there have been credible reports of IS carrying out mass executions in the city and seizing tens of thousands of people for use as human shields.
IS’s “depraved, cowardly strategy is to attempt to use the presence of civilians to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military operations”, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in a statement.
The jihadists are “effectively using tens of thousands of women, men and children as human shields,” he said.
The UN cited reports indicating IS has forcibly taken civilians into Mosul, killing those who resist or who were previously members of Iraqi security forces.
It said more than 250 people were executed in just two days earlier this week.

A gospel-singing evangelical bishop with a controversial past is favored to be elected the new mayor of Rio de Janeiro on Sunday.
Various towns and cities across Brazil are holding runoff votes after a first round on October 2 saw the country’s former governing party (PT) humiliated.
The municipal polls are a gauge of how Brazil is shifting to the right ahead of presidential elections in 2018.
The most closely-watched race is in Rio, host of last month’s Olympic Games.
Its outgoing mayor Eduardo Paes is a member of the center-right PMDB party of Brazil’s unpopular President Michel Temer.
Now Marcelo Crivella, 59, from the conservative Brazilian Republican Party (PRB), is expected to win the vote.
A senator and former missionary in Africa, Crivella once wrote that homosexuality was a “terrible evil.”
His party is considered the political wing of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, founded by Crivella’s billionaire uncle.
Crivella has promised a tough crackdown on violent crime in the troubled metropolis.
Opinion polls have given him a lead of up to 20 points over his leftist rival Marcelo Freixo.
Freixo, 49, of the Socialism and Freedom Party, proposes socially liberal policies.
The Workers’ Party was once a strong force in Brazilian politics, but has fallen low.
Dilma Rousseff lost the presidency in August after being impeached for allegedly fiddling state accounts.
That ended 13 years of PT government in Brazil. Under the PT, Latin America’s biggest economy soared before plunging into recession.
Rousseff’s predecessor, party founder Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, faces charges linked to a huge corruption probe into state oil firm Petrobras.
In the economic capital Sao Paulo, the PT lost control of city hall outright in the first round on October 2.
Rousseff was replaced by Temer after her impeachment.
Temer is deeply unpopular, according to opinion polls. He is pushing a public spending cap through congress.
But voters are apparently even more fed up with recession and corruption scandals.
The PMDB won more city halls than any other party in the first round.
Crivella is eyeing victory despite suffering some shock revelations during the election campaigns.
He was forced to deny a report in Veja magazine on October 22 that he was arrested in 1990 for making armed threats when evicting a family from land owned by his church.
“He simply represents influence and the introduction of religion into politics,” said Ivar Hartmann, a law professor at Rio’s Getulio Vargas Foundation.
Crivella has risen thanks to “the evangelists’ growing indoctrination of middle and lower-class communities,” Hartmann said.
Brazil’s evangelical movement was seen as one of the drivers of Rousseff’s impeachment.
One of the leaders of the process was prominent evangelist Eduardo Cunha, the former speaker of congress.
Cunha has since been arrested for alleged corruption in the Petrobras case.
Authorities have boosted security in Rio and other cities for Sunday’s vote.

The internet is already pulling out the skeletons in Achola’s closet even before the dust settles on her covert traditional wedding held only a week ago.
Photos of Jomo’s wife during her time in South Africa have been unearthed to haunt her; Ngobi attended an expensive private girls’ boarding school situated in the small town of Hilton in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands.
While in South Africa, she dated a handsome man called Sinqobile Ngwenya; he’s a South African citizen. From his LinkdIn profile, Ngwenya is the founding executive director of the Consult Inc. – Brand Architects.
 
 Sinqobile Ngwenya described himself on his LinkdIn profile.
Photos of Achola Ngobi and Ngwenya smooching were first shared by the Star; the photos also show the ex lovers enjoying quality time together at public places.
 

Taiwanese-born filmmaker Ang Lee predicted Friday that the Chinese film market was about to explode, not only overtaking but dwarfing the American box office in a matter of years.
The two-time Oscar winner said executives in the world’s second economy used to rely on him as a bridge to Hollywood, but the newly-confident Chinese film industry no longer finds it necessary.
“It’s huge, it’s going to be bigger in a few years,” the 62-year-old told reporters on the red carpet at the glitzy BAFTA Britannia Awards in Beverly Hills.
“In a few years it’s probably going to be bigger (than the US) and then in the years to come a lot bigger. They’ve got many people and, most importantly, film has been lacking in the past in the culture, so it’s still fresh.”
PricewaterhouseCoopers projects China’s box office will rise from $4.3 billion in 2014 to $8.9 billion in 2019, outstripping the US.
Hollywood studios have been looking to capitalize on the burgeoning market through partnerships with Chinese companies.
Meanwhile, Beijing has ambitions to increase China’s “soft power,” unleashing a wave of Chinese money into Hollywood.
Real estate developer turned media conglomerate Wanda bought “Jurassic World” creator Legendary Entertainment for $3.5 billion earlier this year.
Last month Wanda — which snapped up US movie theatre chain AMC in 2012 for $2.6 billion — announced it would invest in movies produced by Sony Pictures, its first deal with one of Hollywood’s so-called “Big Six” studios.
Lee was the first Asian ever to win an Oscar for directing, in 2006 for gay cowboy movie “Brokeback Mountain.” He went on to win again for 2012’s “Life of Pi.”
He was at the BAFTA LA ceremony — which celebrates the contribution of Hollywood talent and British entertainers — to receive the John Schlesinger Britannia Award for excellence in directing.
His war drama “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” starring Joe Alwyn, Kristen Stewart, Vin Diesel and Steve Martin, is released in the US on November 11.
Americans Jodie Foster, 53, and Samuel L. Jackson, 67, were also honored at the gala in the luxury Beverly Hilton hotel while Tom Hanks, Jake Gyllenhaal, Brie Larson and Christopher Guest presented awards.
Among the Britons being recognized were Ewan McGregor, who starred in the “Star Wars” prequel trilogy, and Felicity Jones, the lead in the upcoming spin-off, “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.”
Three-time Golden Globe winner Ricky Gervais, 55, received the Charlie Chaplin Britannia Award for excellence in comedy.
American actor Simon Helberg appeared to reference Britain’s anti-EU “Brexit” vote and the US presidential election when he told AFP comedy in the two countries was becoming similar — as was politics.
“I think the Brits seem to manage to be very intellectual and cerebral at times while masquerading as being very silly,” said the 35-year-old, best known for US hit comedy “The Big Bang Theory.”
“So there’s this depth to it, but it can also work on a silly level. Sometimes I think Americans can lean very heavily into the silly, so you get a little less of the wit on occasion.
“But you know what? It’s all evening out. Our countries are both in a dangerous moment right now, so we’ll see. The comedy and the political environment are all mirroring each other.”
Americans decide in their presidential polls on November 8 between Democrat Hillary Clinton, who has weathered controversy over her misuse of a private email server while Secretary of State, and Republican Donald Trump, whose rhetoric on women, Muslims and immigration has polarized the electorate.

Malaysia’s Sepang circuit agreed on Saturday to extend its successful MotoGP event until at least 2021, in sharp contrast to rumblings that it may drop its loss-making Formula One race.
A five-year extension of Sepang’s contract with Dorna Sports, MotoGP’s commercial rights holder, was signed earlier on Saturday, officials said.
The current contract expires this year.
“I’m happy to inform that we have signed an extension for five years ending in 2021,” Sepang International Circuit chairman Azman Yahya told a press conference ahead of Sunday’s race.
“We will continue with the MotoGP for the next five years and we think that we will see an even better response from the Malaysian public.”
Sepang has hosted the Malaysia Motorcycling Grand Prix since the circuit opened in 1999.
The track expects a record 90,000 spectators for Sunday’s sold-out grand prix, up from 85,000 last year, officials have said.
But track CEO Razlan Razali said earlier this week Malaysia may take a “temporary break” from F1 after its current race contract expires in 2018, citing ebbing ticket sales and TV viewership.
“If there is no economic value, why should we continue? We better take a temporary break,” he told AFP.
Like MotoGP, the F1 race also has been held since 1999 at Sepang, which is known for its tropical downpours and sauna-like conditions.
The Malaysian F1 is Asia’s second-oldest next to the Japanese Grand Prix, which dates back to 1976.
Formula One races are often loss-making but still attractive to many cities because of their prestige and exposure to global audiences.
But Razlan said Sepang, which can accommodate 120,000 fans, drew just 45,000 to last month’s Malaysian F1 event and TV ratings were poor.
Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said competition from newer events outside of Malaysia was taking its toll.
“I think we should stop hosting the F1. At least for a while. Cost too high, returns limited,” he said on Twitter.
F1 is struggling worldwide, with official figures showing it has shed 200 million TV viewers globally since 2008.
US firm Liberty Media announced a takeover of F1 last month amid hopes that a new leadership and plans for greater US penetration will provide a lifeline.
Malaysia’s MotoGP, by contrast, is consistently popular.
“It was not that difficult to convince the government of Malaysia to continue to support the Malaysia (motorcycle) Grand Prix,” Razlan said Saturday.
“We achieve record-breaking crowds every year.”
Dorna Sports CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta lauded the Malaysian MotoGP as an “incredible spectacle”.
“I must say that we are very proud to renew at least for these five years,” he said.