Month: November 2016

Jurgen Klopp says he will do his best to protect starlet Ben Woodburn from the media spotlight after he became the youngest scorer in Liverpool’s history in their League Cup victory over Leeds.
Woodburn, aged 17 years and 45 days, edged out Liverpool legend Michael Owen by 98 days when he struck in the 81st minute of Tuesday’s quarter-final with the previous record holder sitting in the stands.
He shared the backpage headlines with the air crash tragedy in Colombia that all but wiped out the Brazilian team Chapecoense.
Klopp also praised other youngsters who played in the 2-0 win and said he thought the club would be able to control the situation.
“The only problem is I’m afraid about all you in the media. That’s why I’m so quiet,” said Klopp after the victory.
“We know how to handle the situation.”
Klopp, who has engineered a revival in Liverpool’s fortunes since he took over late last year and guided them to second in the Premier League table, said Woodburn was not the finished article.
Klopp added he hoped Woodburn would not be distracted by the sudden flurry of attention.
“He still has a lot of things to do and especially to keep the public away for as long as possible — but that is a difficult thing to do,” said Klopp.
“I said well done to him afterwards. It was not too difficult. I would have scored too in that situation. We know what Ben is capable of and what he is already able to do.”

The no holds barred lawyer Ahmednasir Abdullahi through his law firm Ahmednasir and Abdikadir & Co Advocates wants Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) Governor Dr Patrick Njoroge investigated for abuse of office without authority.
The firm said that the CBK for the past 18 months has been run without a fully constituted board as required by the Central Bank of Kenya Act.
The firm of running the CBK as a one man show in the absence of a fully constituted board.
In a letter written to the EACC CEO Halakhe Waqo, the firm claims the Governor has spent, incurred expenses and created liability for the bank without any due authority or supervision by the board of directors as mandatorily required by law.
the letter read in part.
 
The firm argued that under Njoroge’s tenure, billions of taxpayer’s money had been unlawfully spent with no checks, balances and no management oversight.
read the letter.
Ahmednassir’s firm challenged the EACC to take the opportunity to prove wrong the widely held public perception that the commission is a mere lapdog and an appendage of the executive and investigate Dr Njoroge properly and within the confines of the law.

I will simply avoid talking about the new video because we are tired of hearing the old Femi One beef. Let us face it, the fans moved on and so did the ladies who were called out in the song.
 
Back to the abs, the lass pulled up in sport bra and tiny calvin Klein shorts to prove that the abs were real and not photo shopped or rather airbrushed as most celebrities nowadays do.
Clearly all the exercise Noti Flow has been doing is proving to have done some good job as she can now stunt on her ‘haters’ with her fine body.
Meanwhile, the artist is flying high with her new song that came a few weeks after rapper Femi One called her out. The timing is obviously not good but hopefully she will get the attention she is looking for.
Also read:
However, she has called out Femi One in her recent song meaning the two might actualy tae this abiit too far than we expected. She captioned one of her photos using the lyrics that read to say,
She wrote.
She is also doing an okay job in the Nairobi Diaries reality show that features most Nairobi socialites. Anyway checkout the photo below:
 

As the world is trying to come to terms with the Colombia plane crash, which went down near Medellin late Monday killing 71people on board and leaving only six survivors.
Among the dead, were the players and staff of Chapecoense Real team, a Brazilian football club which was on verge of making history by emerging as the South American champions in the Copa Sudamericana final Cup.
Also read : 
Calamities of such proportion can literally shake the very core of a country and it can take years for the wounds to heal. History however is strewn with such horrifying cases where entire teams have been wiped out from the face of earth in seconds.
 
Torino soccer club plane crash in 1949
On May 1949, an airplane carrying 31 passengers slammed into a mountain peak, outside Turin, Italy. On board were 22 members of Torino soccer club. The plane crash shook Italy to the core, the psychological effects haunted the Italian soccer team for decades that a book detailing the crash was even written and titled “The day Italian football died”
Manchester United crash, 1958
 
The English football club will forever remember the events of Feb, 6 when the plane carrying Manchester United team crashed as it was taking off from Munich airport killing 23 passengers including eight players and eight journalists.
To commemorate the loss, a clock at Old Trafford stadium in Manchester was kept frozen at 3:04 p.m. the time of the crash.
 
United States Figure Skating team crash
USA lost one of its most glittering talent, and it took years for it to recover following the plane crash.The 18-member team was on its way to the World Figure Skating Championships in Prague on 15th Feb 1961 after their plane plunged into a field in Belgium killing the entire team.
Zambian National Team plane crash, 1993
 
Zambia’s national team ‘chipolopolo’ were traveling to Dakar on April 27 to play against Senegal in a match to qualify for the World Cup.
The eagerly anticipated match however never took off, the plane Chipolopolo team were on board crashed over the Atlantic Ocean after refueling in Libreville, the capital of Gabon. Eighteen players and five officials from the team were killed.
In 2012 in a highly emotional match many believed had already been predetermined by the gods, Zambia national team won the African Cup of Nations in Libreville, Gabon, the same country their teammates had perished in 19 years earlier. The victory was dedicated to those who had lost their lives.
 
1972, Old Christians Rugby Union Club disaster.
 
This is one of one of the most harrowing stories of survival, the story is so compelling that a book “Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors,” by Piers Paul Read and a 1993 Hollywood film “Alive.” Was inspired by the heroic deeds based on the story.
An Uruguayan Air Force charter plane carrying 45 people, most of them members of the Old Christians rugby club and their supporters, crashed on 13th Oct 1972, high in the Andes Mountains of Argentina.
Stranded at an altitude of more than 11,000 feet in freezing conditions with no food, 16 passengers were rescued 72 days after the crash.
The survivors had reportedly survived by cannibalizing the frozen bodies of their fellow dead passengers.
Twenty-seven people survived the crash and their injuries in the first several days. Of the initial survivors, eight were killed by an avalanche while sleeping in the plane’s fuselage more than two weeks after the crash. The last 16 people were rescued after two of the team’s players trekked for 10 days looking for help.
(archives, americas-plane-crashes-sports-teams)

But she is more famous as a media personality having founded Arimus Media Limited a production house and having worked in TV stations like NTV and Citizen TV where she hosted the wildly-popular ‘Sunday Live’.

She also hosted the Africa Leadership Dialogue a pan African TV show where she talks with African leaders about the issues affecting the continent and the way forward.
Aside from TV, Julie has also made her mark in the print and radio world as a radio presenter on Capital F.M and once ran a now-defunct magazine called ‘Quest’
7 years after launching Julie left the show in the capable hands of  Anne Kiguta. But her journey as a TV siren was not yet over as about a  year after leaving Citizen TV, Julie made a grand comeback in a rival TV station. This was alongside Jalang’o in a new raffle game dubbed ‘Shinda Washinde’ on KTN.
Also Read:
The revered news anchor Is not only a good business woman and a media personality but beautiful too. The mother of four showed us that she has still got it in a tiny pair of shorts that showed off her legs:
 

The Israeli air force fired two missiles at dawn on Wednesday that hit near Damascus, without causing any casualties, Syrian state television said.
“The air force of the Israeli enemy today launched two missiles from Lebanese air space,” it said, adding that they hit the Sabbura area west of Damascus.
Israel, which is technically still at war with Syria, has sought to limit its involvement in its neighbour’s five-year conflict.
But it has carried out sporadic sorties against Lebanon’s Hezbollah inside Syria, which has forces fighting in support of the Damascus government.

David Rudisha has a wife so people expect him to uphold high moral standards bestowed upon married men. The double Olympic champion is married to Lizzy Naanyu and they are blessed with two beautiful daughters.
 
Rudisha however caused a stir when he was seen cuddling a pretty lady in America; the light skin chick was donning tiny top and shorts while her hands were wrapped around Rudisha’s waist.
Rudisha captioned the photo he posed with the lady.
 
The photo sparked a barrage of questions from the athlete’s fans who were keen to know who the lady was and what he meant in his caption.
Dave be slaying the poon
@rudisha800m who is she?:)
I see you!! @rudisha800m
The person or the place?
Mama patience come see this.Rudisha kwisha were.Lol
Hebu kuja nyumbani
Ghafla! has learnt that the  eye candy is called Claire Green and she is a student at University of Arizona. She is also a track and field athlete.
Apparently Rudisha was at the University of Arizona for a mentorship program with students and not on a pleasure mission as many people thought. He only got too close with the pretty lady while taking photos together.
 
 
 

The hit maker teased his fans with the photo where he is seen standing in front of a mirror wearing boxers and an open shirt to flaunt his abs.
Unfortunately the singer did not reveal  his crotch as he hid it using an emoji.
 
Fans who were eager to see his left thirsty comments begging the singer to show off the cassava for the first time. Other went further to suggest that he was afraid to show it off because it is tiny or rather not pleasing to the eye.
This photo comes a few weeks after Ommy Dimpoz flaunted his ‘flute’ on Instagram while exercising at the gym. The Tanzanian artistes are adopting a habit of leaving women thirsty with their tools just to get attention.
 
Anyway, in Diamond Platnumz case the cassava was nowhere to be seen, however judging from the stories going around the guy apparently has a good eggplant.

An outspoken billionaire Saudi prince wants an “urgent” end to his country’s ban on women driving, saying overturning the law was a matter of women’s rights and economic necessity.
“Stop the debate: Time for women to drive,” Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said on his official Twitter account, @Alwaleed_Talal.
Alwaleed is an unusually outspoken member of the Saudi royal family who holds no political posts but chairs Kingdom Holding Co., which has interests including US banking giant Citigroup and the Euro Disney theme park.
He is a longtime advocate of women’s rights in the Islamic kingdom, which has some of the world’s tightest restrictions on women and is the only country where they are not allowed to drive.
In conjunction with his short tweet, Alwaleed’s office issued an unusually long statement late Tuesday outlining his reasons for supporting an end to the ban.
“Preventing a woman from driving a car is today an issue of rights similar to the one that forbade her from receiving an education or having an independent identity,” Alwaleed said.
“They are all unjust acts by a traditional society, far more restrictive than what is lawfully allowed by the precepts of religion.”
He also detailed the “economic costs” of women having to rely on foreign private drivers or taxis, since public transit is not a viable alternative in the kingdom.
Using foreign drivers drains billions of dollars from the Saudi economy, Alwaleed said.
He calculated that families spend an average of 3,800 riyals ($1,000, 940 euros) a month on a driver, money which otherwise could help household incomes at a time when many are making do with less.
Even if their husbands can take time out to transport the women, that requires temporarily leaving the office and “undermines the productivity of the workforce,” Alwaleed said.
“Having women drive has become an urgent social demand predicated upon current economic circumstances.”
The prince said he is making his call on behalf of those with “limited means”.
A slow expansion of women’s rights began under the late king Abdullah, who in 2013 named them to the Shura Council which advises cabinet.
Abdullah also announced that women could for the first time vote and run in municipal elections, which were held last December.
These and other decisions in Saudi history were initially opposed by “certain elements” but soon became accepted, Alwaleed said, calling for “a similarly decisive” political act.
In April, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said change cannot be forced, and “it is up to Saudi society.”
In Alwaleed’s view, however, “what cannot be allowed is to have one segment imposing its preferences on the rest of society.”

Residents in Pakistani Kashmir are racing to build underground bunkers for the first time since the 1990s, frightened by what they say is the worst cross-border violence since a ceasefire was agreed in 2003.
Months of tension between India and Pakistan have erupted into shellings and gunfire across the disputed Kashmir frontier, claiming the lives of dozens of people, including civilians.
People in Azad Kashmir’s Neelum Valley say the attacks come once or twice a week, and they never know when they might have to dive for cover.
Chand Bibi has concrete and steel rods waiting to be transformed into an underground bunker where her terrified family can take shelter as the monstrous boom of shelling reawakens old nightmares.
“You are talking about fear,” the 62-year-old says. “We are near to dying at the moment we hear the boom.
“The voice of the guns is horrible.”
When it comes, Bibi and her relatives pile blankets, quilts and clothes on top of their children to muffle the noise and their panic.
Soon the extended family of about 20 people will be able to flee underground to the bunker they have paid 300,000 Pakistani rupees ($3,000) to build — just under the cost of constructing a mud house in the valley, where the average worker makes around 800 rupees per day.
Sultan Ahmed is spending even more: up to 500,000 rupees for a three metre by four metre (10 foot by 14 foot) space reinforced by more than 20 centimetres (eight inches) of concrete, fortified with steel rods, and buried under nearly a metre of soil.
Some 25 people will be able to take shelter inside the bunker once it is completed, the 47-year-old teacher says.
Local mason Ghulam Hussain tells AFP his business has increased because of the renewed violence, as he packs his tools after finishing a bunker at one house to rush to another and start again.
Around half a million people live within range of Indian fire along the Pakistani side of the Line of Control, the de facto border that has divided the Himalayan region since 2003, according to Farooq Haider Khan, leader of Azad Kashmir.
He says the government plans to build “community bunkers”.
Kashmir is one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints, bitterly divided between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan since the end of British colonial rule in 1947 but claimed in full by both.
They have already fought two wars over the mountainous region, but years of relative peace after the 2003 ceasefire were shattered in September, after India blamed Pakistani militants for a raid on an army base that killed 19 soldiers.
India said it had responded by carrying out “surgical strikes” across the heavily militarised border, sparking a furious reaction from Islamabad, which denied the strikes took place.
On Tuesday armed militants stormed a major Indian army base near the frontier with Pakistan, killing seven soldiers in the most audacious such attack since the September raid.
The fear spiralling on the Pakistani side is not only consuming residents — tourism to the scenic Neelum Valley has plummeted this year, local official Sardar Abdul Waheed tells AFP.
“I am nervous that if this situation continues my whole investment will be sunk,” says Zulfiqar Ali, who built a guesthouse in the valley last year.
Since AFP’s visit the Neelum Valley has been cut off.
Cross-border firing hit a civilian bus there on November 23, killing at least nine people, one of the highest one-day tolls since the latest unrest began.
In response authorities shut down the main road connecting the Azad Kashmir capital of Muzaffarabad with the valley, effectively sealing it off from the rest of Pakistan with no word when it will be reopened.
Before the valley was closed, many residents told AFP they could not afford to leave and had nowhere to go.
Others, however, said they refused to be driven away.
Those who cannot pay the high cost of transporting bunker materials from Kashmir’s main cities to the remote valley are fortifying their homes in whatever way they can.
“We are just placing sandbags to reinforce the front walls,” says 65-year-old widow Zarina Bibi, head of a family of 15.
“We are in a state of fear all the time. We don’t know when the Indian troops will start shelling again.”

Two pro-independence Hong Kong lawmakers lost their appeal Wednesday against a ban preventing them from taking up their seats in parliament as Beijing faces accusations of stepping up interference in the city’s politics.
Baggio Leung and Yau Wai-ching deliberately misread their oaths of office, inserted expletives and draped themselves with “Hong Kong is not China” flags during a swearing-in ceremony in October.
Speaking after Wednesday’s judgement, an angry Leung said the “invisible hand” of Beijing had intervened in Hong Kong’s affairs.
Leung and Yau were voted in to parliament in citywide polls in September which saw several rebel candidates take seats for the first time, advocating either independence or self-determination for Hong Kong.
The new movement supporting a possible split from Beijing for the semi-autonomous city has gained traction as young pro-democracy campaigners grow increasingly frustrated with a lack of political reform.
Beijing hit out at the pair in a special “interpretation” of the city’s constitution earlier in November that effectively prevented them from taking up their seats because of the way they took the oath.
Following Beijing’s protest, Hong Kong’s High Court ruled the two lawmakers should be disqualified from the legislature because their oaths were invalid, in an unprecedented judicial review brought by the city’s leader and justice secretary.
Yau and Leung appealed, but lost out Wednesday in a judgement that took Beijing’s ruling into account, amid criticism that the separation of powers in Hong Kong has been compromised.
The Court of Appeal’s judgement referred to Beijing’s ruling as giving the “true meaning” to the part of the constitution that requires lawmakers to take an oath of allegiance to Hong Kong as a special administrative region of China.
The judgement said the court’s duty to apply the city’s constitution, known as the Basic Law, outweighed the doctrine of separation of powers and non-intervention.
Yau and Baggio were originally offered a second chance at taking the oath by the president of the legislature, but Beijing stepped in to prevent that.
Its special interpretation of the Basic Law ruled that any oath-taker who does not follow the prescribed wording of the oath, “or takes the oath in a manner which is not sincere or not solemn”, should be disqualified.
Wednesday’s appeal judgement said there could be “no dispute” that Yau and Leung had declined to take the oath.
Leung said he did not believe he had done anything wrong.
“The way the oath incident has developed from an affair within Hong Kong to what it is now is unexpected to us all,” he told reporters.
Leung said the pair were actively considering their next step but had not decided whether to proceed to the Court of Final Appeal.
The judgement came as the government announced plans to take a third newly elected lawmaker to court over her oath-taking.
The department of justice said it would initiate proceedings against teacher Lau Siu-lai, a prominent activist who made her name during the city’s mass pro-democracy rallies in 2014 and now advocates self-determination for Hong Kong.
It gave no further detail on the grounds for the case.
Lau’s oath was rejected during her swearing in as she read the pledge at a snail’s pace, leaving long gaps between every word.
She was later given a second chance to read it and was able to take up her seat.
Lau slammed the decision to take her to court as “political suppression”.

Gambian President Yahya Jammeh said that no protests would be permitted after a two-week electoral campaign, as rallies in favour of opposition leader Adama Barrow reached boiling point in the capital, Banjul.
A day of opposition protests ahead of a presidential election in two days’ time highlighted deep divisions over Jammeh’s 22-year-rule, while the president took the opportunity to say his opponents could not succeed.
Barrow, a businessman, emerged from obscurity to become the flagbearer of all The Gambia’s opposition parties bar one after mass arrests of supporters from the largest anti-government grouping in April.
“People have shown us tremendous support. With that support we are 100 percent plus that we are going to win and with a big margin,” he told AFP on the final day of the campaign.
With no official opinion polls, it is difficult to corroborate Barrow’s claim, but diplomatic sources have indicated in recent days that Jammeh faces his most significant challenge since taking power in a 1994 coup.
“If Jammeh wants advice… if he loses, let him accept the will of the people and accept the value of the Gambian people,” Barrow said.
Rights bodies and media watchdogs including Reporters Without Borders (RSF) accuse Jammeh of cultivating a “pervasive climate of fear” and of crushing dissent against his regime, one cause of the mass exodus of Gambian youths to Europe.
At a rally near the capital Tuesday, people shouted “Step down!” as they waved red cards demanding Jammeh’s removal after 22 years in power.
“He killed dozens of our brothers, he’s a killer,” one man shouted, as supporters hanging out of parked vehicles kept up a chorus of: “Murderer, murderer!”
“This is to show I would sacrifice my blood for the country,” said Mustafa Njie, a former Jammeh supporter turned opposition activist, gesturing at his red bandana.
Following unprecedented rallies nationwide, Barrow has urged President Jammeh to go peacefully if he loses power on Thursday.
Jammeh has won four elections with his ruling Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction, following a 2002 constitutional amendment lifting term limits.
At his own final meeting with thousands of green-clad supporters in Banjul, the strongman said there was no question of a different result this time.
“Nothing is going to happen, this is not the first time we have conducted elections,” Jammeh told journalists.
“They will not win,” he added.
The leader added there was “no reason for anybody to protest” as The Gambia’s elections could not be rigged. “In this country we don’t allow demonstrations,” he added. Protests have been permitted only during the two weeks of the electoral campaign.
Barrow said a memorandum signed by all the coalition parties in October had laid out plans for a reform-led administration.
A third candidate, former ruling party deputy Mama Kandeh, is standing for the Gambia Democratic Congress.
Campaigning has until now been overwhelmingly peaceful.
More than 880,000 voters are expected to cast their ballots when this tiny west African nation goes to the polls on Thursday.

The Bangladesh Cricket Board has levied a record fine on two national team players for what it called “serious” breaches of discipline after they reportedly entertained female guests in their hotel rooms.
Pace bowler Al-Amin Hossain and batsman Sabbir Rahman were both fined around $15,000 for “serious off-field disciplinary breaches” during the ongoing Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) Twenty20 tournament, said the BCB in a statement late Tuesday.
It gave no details of the charges against the players, but the Prothom Alo daily reported online that they had taken female guests to their hotel rooms during the tour.
“The players have been reminded of their responsibility as national cricketers and have been warned that any repetition of similar acts of indiscretion in the future will result in harsher penalty,” the BCB said.
The BPL is modelled on the glitzy Indian Cricket League and has been blighted by match-fixing scandals, prompting authorities to suspend the meet for two years.
Seven franchises are playing in the current edition, which includes such major names as Pakistan?s Shahid Afridi, West Indies? Chris Gayle and Sri Lanka?s Kumar Sangakkara.
The fines are the highest ever imposed on a Bangladeshi player on disciplinary grounds.
Al-Amin’s amounts to 50 percent of his BPL contract money for playing for the Barisal Bulls while Sabbir’s is equal to 30 percent of his pay from the Rajshahi Kings.
The BCB also fined Sabbir and Afghan cricketer Mohammad Shahzad 15 percent of their match fees over an onfield bust-up
Shahzad, who was also banned for two matches, nudged Sabbir with the bat when the Bangladeshi player celebrated his dismissal during a match on Monday.

From taking shots at bloggers for allegedly refusing to give him the respect he deserves to removing  SOC from the group of musicians he has helped. Apparently he didn’t take his own advice of ‘tenda wema enda zako’ and went on to list the musicians who have benefited from him.
 
Now he is taking shots at some huge gospel artistes.
As if Willy Paul does not already have enough on his plate, Ringtone took to social media and accused him of tarnishing his good name alongside Pitson. Of all people Pitson! The most scandal-free of all gospel artistes.
This is what Ringtone posted;
(sp). (sp).
 
This outburst coincidentally comes a few hours after Willy Paul announced that Tiga Wana had achieved a record-breaking 400,000 views.
 
Pitson and Willy Paul are yet to respond to Ringtone’s outburst with Willy Paul choosing to ignore it all together.
 

Colombia’s Senate has approved a revised peace accord between the government and the FARC rebel group, taking a first step toward ratifying an agreement that was rejected by voters.
The text, which was renegotiated after an earlier version was given a thumbs down in the October 2 national referendum, now must be approved by the lower house of the Colombian Congress.
Members of the Centro Democratico, the right-wing party that has led the opposition to a peace deal, walked out of the Senate in protest before Tuesday night’s vote.
The measure then passed by a vote of 75-0.
“Long live peace, long live Colombia,” shouted Senate president Mauricio Lizcano as he closed the session.
The accord seeks to end a 52-year-old armed conflict between the FARC — Colombia’s largest leftist guerrilla group — and the state.
Colombian voters, however, wary of a deal that goes easy on rebel leaders, dealt an unexpected blow to the process when they voted against it.
The sides returned to the negotiating table in Havana and produced a new version that President Juan Manuel Santos insists takes into account the opposition’s objections.
Rather than risk rejection in another referendum, Santos, who won the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize, decided to submit the revised accord to the Congress for approval.
His chief rival, ex-president Alvaro Uribe, has rejected the modified deal.
Uribe has insisted, for instance, that FARC leaders should not be allowed to run for office while still serving sentences for atrocities.
He demands any new accord be passed by referendum.
The conflict has killed at least 260,000 people and displaced seven million, according to authorities.

Emilie Fougerolles voted for the far left in 2012 and is “troubled by the racism” of France’s far-right National Front, but nevertheless she is seriously thinking of voting for its presidential candidate Marine Le Pen next year.
The 34-year-old sales clerk lives in the Paris dormitory town of Mantes-la-Ville, one of 10 cities the National Front (FN) seized control of during municipal elections in 2014.
Since then, residents are relieved that “nothing has changed in our daily lives,” Fougerolles said in the low-rise town some 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of the French capital.
The string of jihadist attacks that have claimed 238 lives in France since January 2015 have contributed to the shift in the town of around 20,000 inhabitants.
“We live in permanent fear,” said Fougerolles, who was especially shaken by the jihadist murder in June this year of a police officer and his companion in Magnanville, just a few kilometres away.
One of her four daughters was taking a judo class only 200 metres (yards) away from the scene of the attack at the time.
That was when Fougerolles began taking an interest in Le Pen. “She has good ideas when it comes to terrorism,” Fougerolles said. “If her name weren’t Le Pen I would have no doubts at all about voting for her.”
The 48-year-old FN leader is the youngest daughter of the fiery and openly xenophobic Jean-Marie Le Pen, who led the party for nearly 40 years.
Since succeeding him in 2011 she has worked to shed the party’s racist and anti-Semitic image while hoping to capitalise on economic gloom and concern about Europe’s biggest migrant crisis since World War II.
As part of this strategy, she has reportedly instructed FN mayors not to make waves in their cities.
Cyril Nauth, a 35-year-old history and geography teacher and the first FN mayor in the Paris region, failed to see through on his campaign promises to block a new mosque in Mantes-la-Ville, though he has cut subsidies to civic groups.
Le Pen has also seized on the fears generated by the attacks with promises of boosting security and countering perceived Islamic inroads into French society.
The so-called “de-demonising” strategy has translated into votes, and the party won 28 percent in the first round of last year’s regional elections, though it was defeated in the run-off when the mainstream parties worked together to block it.
Now, thanks partly to deep disarray on the left, voter surveys predict that Le Pen will come in second or even first in the first round of the presidential vote in April, qualifying her for the May run-off.
She is then tipped to lose, most likely to the newly chosen rightwing candidate Francois Fillon.
But after the shock election of Donald Trump in the United States, no-one is writing off Le Pen’s chances.
Franck Party, a 49-year-old supermarket manager, said he would “never” have voted for Jean-Marie Le Pen because he is “too over the top,” but he has voted FN since Marine took over.
“Her positions on defending France’s identity resonate with me,” he said, adding that he opposes “mass immigration” and the “dictatorship of Brussels”.
Like Party, many residents of Mantes-la-Ville, which is slightly poorer than the national average, make no bones about voting FN.
“I won’t hide it,” said Alain Baudouin, a 56-year-old former carworker who has taken early retirement, slamming “these immigrants who have everything”.
A former mason who gave his name only as Frederic agreed, saying he was sacked “because of Turkish and Polish workers”, adding: “Vive the FN”.
Patricia, a 58-year-old woman who works at Mantes-la-Ville’s town hall, said she did not regret voting FN in the 2014 municipal elections, and said she would vote for Le Pen in 2017.
Like Fougerolles, she has seen little change in the city. “Maybe the streets are cleaner?” she said, before adding that for her the main thing is: “We need to revitalise France!”
A woman in her 70s who declined to give her name said she voted for the FN mayor because she was “fed up of state handouts and immigrants.”
But when it comes to the presidency, she said she preferred Fillon. Being mayor is “after all not the same as running a country,” she said.

President Uhuru Kenyatta appointed Jaguar to the board of National Authority for Campaign against Alcohol and Drug Abuse (NACADA) in April 2015.
The singer has zealously spearheading the fight against drug abuse attracting praise from Kenyans while at the same time he has clashed with a few NACADA directors whom he accused of being corrupt.
Jaguar’s exemplary work at NACADA could be the reason why he was given yet another lucrative government job.
Water and Irrigation Cabinet Secretary, Eugene Wamalwa, has appointed the “Take It Slow” singer as Water ambassador.
Jaguar was appointed Water ambassador at a ceremony that was attended by Deputy President William Ruto, CS Wamalwa and other dignitaries.
 
Jaguar posted after he landed the new government job.
But thorny challenges awaits Jaguar in his new job; Water and Irrigation ministry has been hit by a major controversy involving Kes 6.8 billion water project in Muranga.
 Raila Odinga has given the government headache saying the project which is meant to increase water supply in Nairobi, will not benefit the general public, instead alleging that the water will benefit a few individuals in Nakuru and Naivasha where the water will be channeled to.
The Cord leader further says that the project will turn eight surrounding counties into deserts as rivers (Yurith, Sise, Kipsonoi, Itare Ndoinet, Timbilil, Chemosir, Itare Kiptiget, Itare Chemosit, Diony Soet, Kipchorian, Songol and Jamju) will be diverted by the project.
Jaguar will surely have a hard task beating the drum for the Water ministry.

Giannis Antetokounmpo led a night of upsets in the NBA on Tuesday with 34 points as the Milwaukee Bucks stunned LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Antetokounmpo, 21, also grabbed 12 rebounds and contributed five assists as a Cavs side featuring both James and Kyrie Irving failed to fire.
Greek international Antetokounmpo was ably supported by Jabari Parker (18 points) and Michael Beasley (17) as the Bucks scored a win which improves their season to 8-8.
The Cavs loss saw the champions fall to 13-3 for the season. James finished with 22 points to lead the scoring for the Cavs, ahead of Irving with 20 points at the BMO Harris Bradley Center.
But the star of the night was Antetokounmpo, who became one of the highest paid players in the NBA earlier this year when he inked a $100 million four-year deal worth around $25 million a season.
Last season the giant forward averaged 16.9 points, 7.7 rebounds. 4.3 assists and 1.4 blocks in 80 games. So far this season Antetokounmpo is averaging 22 points per game, suggesting the Bucks were wise to invest in the 6ft 11in son of Nigerian immigrants who was born in Athens in 1994.
“We were moving the ball and we didn’t stop moving the ball,” Antetokounmpo said. “Our pace was great, we rebounded the ball well and we moved the ball in the offensive end.”
James said the Cavs have been caught napping.
“We let our guard down a little bit,” James said. “They pushed up the tempo and we didn’t get stops. I came out of the game when we were up 10 and we let them go on a quick run to end the quarter. From that point on they got into a rhythm and they’re a rhythm team.”
The Bucks’ upset win was the biggest shock of the day as various in-form teams ended up losing to unheralded opposition.
San Antonio’s nine-game winning streak came to an abrupt halt when the Western Conference giants crashed to a 95-83 defeat against the Orlando Magic.
Serge Ibaka scored 18 points while Nikola Vucevic added 12 points and 10 rebounds as the Magic silenced the Spurs fans at the AT&T Center.
The victory ended a four-game losing streak for Orlando, who improved to 7-11 with the win. San Antonio slipped to 14-4 after the loss.
The Spurs saw any chance of victory slip away in the fourth quarter when they missed seven straight shots in a scoreless four minute, 10 second spell in the fourth quarter.
It was Orlando’s first win over San Antonio in 11 meetings dating back to 2010.
Spurs star Kawhi Leonard led the scoring for the home side with 21 points with LaMarcus Aldridge adding 16 points and Manu Ginobili chipping in with 13.
The Los Angeles Clippers fell to 14-5 against the Brooklyn Nets in New York, with the underdogs improving their record to 5-12 after a wild 127-122 win in double overtime.
Sean Kilpatrick was the hero for the Nets, finishing with a career-high 38 points — 31 of them coming after the third quarter — as Brooklyn reeled in the Clippers who at one stage had led by 18 points.
A stormy contest saw Clippers coach Doc Rivers ejected after an angry outburst at referee crew chief Ken Mauer. Rivers needed to be restrained by players before leaving the court in disgust.
In New Orleans, Anthony Davis maintained his prolific start to the season with 41 points as the Pelicans dismantled the Los Angeles Lakers 105-88.
Davis also plucked 16 rebounds as the Pelicans snapped a two-game losing streak with their fifth straight home victory at the Smoothie King Center.
The win saw the Pelicans improve to 7-12 while the Lakers fell to 9-10.
Davis’s tally marked the seventh time this season he has finished with at least 35 points and 10 rebounds in a game.
The 23-year-old is now averaging just under 32 points per game for the season, and leads the league’s scoring standings from Russell Westbrook (30.9 points per game).

Here’s what we know — and don’t know — about flight LMI 2933, which crashed into the Colombian mountains Monday night with a Brazilian football team on board, killing 71 people. Six people survived.
The charter flight from the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz reported “electrical failures” around 10:00 pm Monday (0300 GMT Tuesday).
Soon after, the plane crashed just short of its destination, the Medellin international airport in northwestern Colombia.
The plane broke apart on impact in the remote mountains of Cerro Gordo, leaving the shattered white fuselage plastered on a hillside.
The plane’s two black boxes have been found. Officials did not immediately say how long it would take to analyze their contents.
A Colombian military source told AFP the plane did not explode on impact, raising suspicions it had run out of fuel when it crashed.
The mountainous terrain is very difficult to access, a local official said.
Rescuers had to hike for more than half an hour to reach the site.
Colombia’s disaster management agency said 71 people were killed.
It lowered an initial death toll of 75 given by the civil aviation authority after it emerged that four people on the passenger manifest had not in fact boarded the plane.
Six people survived: three players, two crew members and a journalist.
The survivors are being treated in hospital.
The regional governor, Luis Perez, said it was a “miracle” they survived.
The plane was carrying club team Chapecoense Real to the first game of a two-leg final to decide the Copa Sudamericana, South America’s second-biggest club tournament.
Based in the city of Chapeco in southern Brazil, the unsung team was having a Cinderella season after defying the odds to reach the Copa Sudamericana finals.
The team’s goalkeeper Marcos Danilo Padilha, 31, died on the way to hospital after the crash, the civil aviation authority said.
His last-minute save in the semi-final had sealed the team’s spot in the final.
There were 20 Brazilian journalists among the dead.
They included six employees from the Brazilian affiliate of Fox Sports television. One of them, Mario Sergio, was a well-known announcer and former Brazilian international football player.
The British Aerospace 146 airliner entered into operation in 1999, said a spokesman for the manufacturer.
The four-engine jet had been used by two other airlines before being sold to Bolivian charter company LAMIA, which operated the flight.
Britain’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch said it was sending investigators to Colombia along with representatives of the plane’s manufacturer BAE Systems to help with investigations.
The same plane was used two weeks ago to fly the Argentine national football team — with superstar Lionel Messi on board — to San Juan, Argentina for a World Cup qualifying match, according to aviation specialist tracking sites.

The internet rumor had the makings of a bizarrely sordid scandal involving a top political aide to Hillary Clinton, allegations of pedophilia and a restaurant in an upscale part of Washington.
It ended in death threats against a small business owner — and became a shocking case study in the dangers of the growing prevalence of “fake news.”
The fake news phenomenon has sent major internet companies scrambling to respond amid claims that bogus reports that proliferated ahead of the US presidential election may have skewed the result.
This episode started in October after WikiLeaks published a batch of hacked emails from John Podesta, the chairman of Clinton’s presidential campaign. Journalists and others have pored over the tens of thousands of stolen communications in search of politically relevant information.
But some readers honed in on a handful of innocuous messages recounting a Clinton fundraiser involving James Alefantis, the owner of a popular Washington pizzeria called Comet.
Almost immediately, “pizzagate” was born as right-leaning conspiracy theorists on the discussion sites 4chan and Reddit claimed Comet was not just a purveyor of pizza and beer but in fact a sinister front hiding a politically connected pedophile ring. Word quickly spread.
“They’ve apparently uncovered an elite child trafficking network which celebrates its tendencies using code words and disturbing artworks,” alleged the website The Vigilant Citizen, which claims to study symbols.
In this world, nothing was innocent. Nude paintings on the walls were suspect. Patterns on a child’s dress or the menu revealed supposed pedophile symbols and a picture of a girl playing with masking tape was evidence of sexual abuse.
Theorists even resorted to the French language in search of potential codes: the name James Alefantis was supposedly derived from the French phrase for “I love children.”
As the November 8 election drew near, hundreds of threatening messages flooded Alefantis’s Instagram account. The restaurant’s Facebook page was also barraged with negative comments.
“My first reaction was there’s a bunch of crazies out there. Everyone is hyped up about the election, so it will go away,” Alefantis told AFP. “But instead it went the other direction.”
After Donald Trump’s shock victory, things got even worse.
“It was a combination of people telling us that they were going to come and do something or that we’ve been found out and that we should show where the tunnels are,” Alefantis told AFP.
To all appearances, there is nothing untoward about Comet. Friendly and stylish, the restaurant is divided into several areas, including one with ping-pong and Fussball tables, and stages for alternative rock performances in the evening.
“Comet is a place that bridges,” said neighborhood resident Leslie Harris who is helping the restaurant respond to the onslaught. “In the early evening, people with strollers bring their little kids in for pizzas.”
“It’s an adult hang out but the irony of it is that it has also been this safe place for our teenagers.”
Alefantis believes the “coordinated and orchestrated attack” was in reality retribution for his political views and his support of Democrats.
“I’m an independent business owner and I feel I have the right to make decisions on who I support and how I utilize my resources,” he said.
Alefantis has contacted the local police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation but there is little that can be done for the time being. Under pressure, Reddit has closed the “pizzagate” discussion, citing “repeated violations of the terms of our content policy.”
But the attacks have not ended.
“It would be like whack-a-mole,” said Claire Wardle of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism. “It’s impossible to regulate or to police these places so instead we have to think of other ways to give users tools to recognize what’s trustworthy or not.”
In the meantime, Alefantis is calling for greater social media awareness.
“It has to be recognized within the broader society that social media can be weaponized,” he said. “You can be easily taken down or destroyed by this sort of attacks.”

When they broke up, Sean took to social  media and wrote ‘’
 
 Elodie who is a famous Kenyan You Tuber sent out this rejoinder claiming that her relationship with Sean had become unhealthy “
After serving up this drama, the two seemed to have called a cease-fire, but Sean posted this, which was interpreted as subtle shade thrown at his ex.

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Enter a US supermarket and the dilemma is all-too common: Will what I buy be healthy? Fattening? A substitute? That’s when many wish they had a specialist at their side.
“Shop with Your Doc,” a program organized by a network of hospitals in California, aims to help with that, stationing doctors and nutritionists in supermarkets to aid customers in navigating food choices in a country where a third of the population is obese.
Chih-I Lee, shopping in a supermarket in the city of Irvine, admits that she has a weakness for fizzy soft drinks but assures that her three children do not drink them and they eat all their vegetables.
Sara Foronda worries about diabetes, which runs in her family, and struggles to look away from alluring cookies on display.
Mike Keegan wants to buy organic products but sometimes they are too expensive so he takes home substitutes.
All are pushing shopping carts at a supermarket in the small city of 260,000 residents located about 37 miles (60 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles.
And suddenly they cross paths with a white coat-clad woman. She is Monica Doherty, a nurse specialized in family medicine.
“We are educating consumers on healthy options to help them maximize their health,” said Doherty, all the while clarifying consumers’ misconceptions and giving advice including recipes.
Substitute mashed potatoes with cauliflower puree, for example, or sweet soft drinks with carbonated water, no sugar added, she suggested.
That is valuable advice to shoppers making their way down aisles crammed with mouth-watering temptations, much of it processed and packaged.
Obesity is an epidemic in the United States, affecting 32.6 percent of the population, according to the World Health Organization, and 36.5 percent, according to the US government.
Although California has a relatively lower incidence, at 24.2 percent, Orange County, where Irvine is located, has an alarming rate: six out of 10 adults there are obese.
“Obesity many times is multifactorial, and poor choices in the grocery store is one piece of it,” said Richard Afable, the doctor who is chief executive and president of St. Joseph Hoag Health, in an interview.
St. Joseph Hoag Health has been organizing these “Shop with Your Doc” days for three years now, and usually holds them during the holiday season when people tend to throw dietary caution to the wind.
The program aims to indirectly fight obesity by being focused on education, “almost training in nutrition,” Afable said.
Similar programs have sprung up in other states, such as Arizona and Pennsylvania, and some of the major supermarket chains employ nutritionists.
At the Irvine supermarket, the fight for healthier eating begins at the entrance, where a smiling Marina Sarwary offers to take customers’ blood pressure.
And while the cuff tightens and the reading is registered, she offers dietary recommendations.
Doherty, meanwhile, is in the aisles, escorted by Jai Coutra, a program employee whose job is to hand out complimentary bags with brochures and a container and spoon to help teach healthy eating.
“Trying to encourage you to look at the balance in your diet: eating whole grain and avoiding processed food, less sugar, taking away the sodium,” he told Foronda in the vegetables section.
The 40-year-old stay-at home mother, fearing diabetes, said it was difficult to stay away from sweets.
“It’s hard because you go up and down the aisle and you see cookies and I try to get away from the cookies, I get an apple, or yogurt with berries,” she said.
“They are saying ‘eat a little smarter, little bit healthier’ and I’m already there, looking at labels — before I never used to do that,” said Keegan, 56, a computer warehouse manager.
Healthy food is more expensive, especially in the United States where the government subsidizes crops like corn and soybeans, key ingredients in junk food.
Getting people to eat better is part of a big socioeconomic problem, according to experts.
“We too often confuse affordable food with cheap food,” wrote Mark Bittman, a food journalist who is a fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit science advocacy group, in his blog.
The long-term solution “starts with making sure that every American has enough money to buy good food at its real cost,” said Bittman, a former columnist for The New York Times.
To do that, he said, would require food policy that encourages agriculture at its true cost, helping the 14 percent of the US workforce whose livelihoods depend on producing that food.
That idea, however, looks difficult to achieve.

Donald Trump dined at one of New York’s swankiest restaurants with Mitt Romney, his erstwhile foe turned potential frontrunner in the race to become America’s next secretary of state.
The dinner came as the president-elect got a shot in the arm by a manufacturing company announcing a deal to keep nearly 1,000 jobs in the Rust Belt and as the New York billionaire prepared to switch his attentions from job interviews to a post-election victory tour.
“We will keep our companies and jobs in the US. Thanks Carrier,” Trump tweeted late Tuesday, referring to the Indiana-based air conditioning company that announced the deal.
The choice of Jean-Georges, a three-starred Michelin restaurant overlooking Central Park run by celebrity French chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten and popular with New York high society, was the clearest indication yet that Trump may select Romney as his chief diplomat.
After the dinner, Romney offered words of praise for Trump that contrasted sharply with his past criticisms, saying he had been “impressed” by his acceptance speech and subsequent preparations for office, calling it “a wonderful evening.”
“I think you’re going to see America continue to lead the world in this century,” Romney told reporters, saying he had “increasing hope that president-elect Trump is the very man who can lead us to that better future.”
The brash real estate tycoon and the former Republican nominee who lost the 2012 election to Barack Obama were joined by Trump’s incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus in full view of other diners, who included CNN’s senior White House correspondent.
In a restaurant where dinner starts at $148 a head, the Trump team said they feasted on garlic soup with thyme, sauteed frog legs and scallops with caramelized cauliflower and a caper raisin emulsion.
For their main course, both the president-elect and Priebus opted for prime sirloin with a citrus glaze and carrots, and Romney for lamb chops with the mushroom bolognese sauce. All three had chocolate cake.
Asked by a reporter briefly allowed to observe the meal whether it was going well, the president-elect flashed a thumbs up.
It was the second face-to-face meeting in 10 days between Trump and the 69-year-old former Massachusetts governor, who savaged him as a “conman” and a “fraud” during the election campaign.
Trump’s secretary of state will be America’s public face to the world who could face the delicate task of reassuring foreign allies alarmed by the president-elect’s rhetoric on the campaign trail.
Other key posts yet to be announced are the secretaries of defense and treasury — for which US media reported that Trump was expected to name former Goldman Sachs banker Steven Mnuchin.
But the search for the right diplomat has proved contentious with some of Trump’s inner circle horrified at the prospect of rewarding a prominent critic with such a plum job.
Romney’s distrust of Russia — at odds with a president-elect who has spoken admiringly of Vladimir Putin — and the respect he generally commands have been touted as qualities by establishment Americans.
It remains unclear how influential the secretary of state would be on crafting foreign policy with Trump loyalist and retired general Michael Flynn already nominated as national security adviser.
Besides Romney, other potential candidates are celebrated general yet scandal-clad former CIA director David Petraeus, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Earlier Tuesday, Trump met Corker, 64, who said that he thought Trump had narrowed the choice “to a very small group of people” and it was important that he selects somebody on the same wave length.
Petraeus, who met the president-elect on Monday, has by far the most foreign policy experience, but was forced to resign from the CIA after showing classified material to his mistress Paula Broadwell.
In 2015, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified materials, and was put on probation and fined $100,000.
Helping Trump claim success on his election pledge to save American jobs from going overseas, air-conditioning company Carrier Corp announced it had reached a deal with the president-elect and vice president-elect Mike Pence “to keep close to 1,000 jobs.”
Trump had tweeted on America’s Thanksgiving holiday last week that he was seeking to persuade the company to stay in the United States.
The New York Times reported that Trump and Pence plan to appear at the company’s Indianapolis plant on Thursday to announce they have struck a deal after the company had threatened to move 2,000 jobs to Mexico.
The same day, both Trump and Pence are also scheduled to lead a post-election rally in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The evening event at the home of the Cincinnati Cyclones, with a maximum capacity of more than 17,000, is expected to be similar to those that drew enthusiastic crowds of thousands during the campaign.
The transition team has dubbed it a “thank you tour.”

There is no doubt Willy Paul and Size 8’s “Tiga Wana” is a club banger, even Kenyans who hate on the song do so on the basis that the two gospel singer claim their song is a gospel jam whereas it has the taste of a typical secular song.
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And guess what, “Tiga Wana” has already garnered over 400k views on YouTube in a week’s time; sure controversy sells any time.
 
Following public backlash over “Tiga Wana”, Bahati stepped forward to apologize on behalf of Willy Paul and Size 8 who remain adamant they haven’t crossed the line.
The “Mapenzi” singer acknowledged that the public had lost trust in gospel musicians as he expressed his sincere apology for contributing in devaluing the gospel of Christ. He says he feels the last gospel song he released is “Barua”.
Bahati surprisingly mentioned that the church was also complaining about contemporary gospel songs which are not used in praise and worship services in churches.
Bahati wrote.
 

Ahmed Ali Mohamed snorkels over sea grass and coral, keeping an eye out for different fish species darting through the waters below him.
But his job is not to catch the fish — as his family has done for generations — instead he only counts them.
Mohamed is one of the first former fishermen to be retrained as a ranger monitoring the health of the reef off Pate Island in southeastern Kenya, where fortunes are dwindling as fast as the fish in the sea.
Pate’s fishermen have plied the inshore waters for generations but must now adapt to survive as — like coastal people around the world — they learn the hard way that the ocean is not an endless resource.
“The community’s population has grown with time and we all depend on the ocean alone for a living,” said Mohamed, 45, a former lobster fisherman.
“Before people would go into the waters and come back with a big catch of fish… but now they don’t even come back with enough to feed their own families.”
The stakes are high for the island, the largest in the idyllic Lamu archipelago.
Fishing became the main source of income after tourism collapsed following a spate of kidnappings by pirates in 2011 and an increase of attacks by Shabaab militants on the mainland.
Community leaders fear the effects of worsening poverty as the fish run out in this mainly Muslim region which neighbours Somalia and has suffered generations of marginalisation by successive governments.
“When it comes to a point where people have nothing to do, no income, (and) increase in poverty, people will have no option but to end up joining bad groups like Al-Shabaab,” said Atwas Swabir, the chairman of Pate’s marine reserve.
Poverty is already entrenched. On the mangrove-fringed island, electricity only reached the torpid fishing village of Faza two months ago. Dozens of children loiter on the shore while donkeys nibble at flotsam in the water and scrawny, diseased cats yowl for scraps when the fishermen come in.
Swabir says many of these children will end up as fishermen “whether they like it or not” so finding new ways to make fishing sustainable without destroying the environment for future generations is essential.
“Fishing is not just an income generating activity, it is a lifestyle,” said local fisheries director Kamalu Sharif. “You cannot remove a fisherman and take him to the farm.”
Close to where Mohamed takes careful notes on an underwater writing slate, traditional wooden dhows work in tandem to drag a large tight-mesh net over the reef scooping up everything in its wake, including young fish, and breaking off bits of sensitive coral.
The reefs teem with fish who are lured there for breeding, making them an easy and vulnerable target for fishermen.
“That is where breeding happens, that is where (fish) lay their eggs. The fishermen are directly targeting those reefs,” said Juliet King, an advisor to Kenya’s Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT), a conservation organisation.
The reef ranger programme, funded by the US-based Nature Conservancy, is aimed at helping fishermen manage their resources better, using a method akin to crop rotation to encourage sequential fishing of the reef giving different areas a chance to recover.
However, the long-term plan is for fishermen to move away from the sensitive reef entirely. Currently, they only use a fraction of the more than 200 nautical miles of waters available to them.
“We are trying to encourage (the fishermen) to extend their fishing range to slightly deeper waters and in less exploited areas and that way we will be tackling this big problem of overfishing,” said George Maina, Marine Project Coordinator for the Nature Conservancy.
Lending the project more urgency is the nearby construction of a major new port, a boon for development that spells doom for the livelihoods of around 4,000 fishermen if they remain inshore, say local officials.
Further out, they can catch larger, more valuable fish, but that requires ice for storage and a market at which to sell them.
Testing a new initiative, dhows set off from Pate at night with ice boxes on board. In the deeper waters beyond the reef, they will fish with a hook and line instead of nets.
The next day, the prized catch of snapper, tuna and emperor fish is whisked to a nearby hotel — which has rented a freezer to the fishermen — before being sent on to upmarket restaurants and lodges across Kenya.
Taking part in this pilot programme, Mohamed Mwanaheri, 40, says he has more than doubled his earnings.
“People need to be informed so that the community can know there is a ready market (and) change their outdated fishing methods,” he said.
Fuzz Dyer, an advisor to NRT and the owner of the hotel where the fish is frozen, reckoned Pate’s fishermen could land 400 kilogrammes (880 pounds) of high-quality fish a day if they are helped to change their methods and access the market.
The alternative, Dyer warned, is disaster with overfishing leaving the reef barren.
“People are just raping the bottom of the ocean,” he said.

The UN has condemned the “descent into hell” being endured by civilians in Aleppo, with the Red Cross saying nearly 20,000 people have fled a Syrian government offensive on the city in three days.
Diplomats said the UN Security Council would hold an emergency meeting Wednesday in New York on the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo, where the army has captured a third of opposition-controlled east in recent days.
The fighting has prompted an exodus of terrified civilians, many fleeing empty-handed into remaining rebel-held territory, or crossing into government-controlled west Aleppo or Kurdish districts.
Up to 20,000 people have fled the regime offensive in the past 72 hours, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.
ICRC spokeswoman Krista Armstrong said the figure was an estimate and the situation remained fluid as “people are fleeing in different directions”.
East Aleppo has been under government siege for more than four months, with international aid stocks exhausted and food supplies running low.
World Food Programme spokeswoman Bettina Luescher said civilians were enduring a “slow motion descent into hell”.
The French UN ambassador Francois Delattre said “France and its partners cannot remain silent in the face of what could be one of the biggest massacres of civilian population since World War II”.
Government forces have advanced swiftly in their two-week operation, capturing all of the city’s northeast in a major blow to the opposition.
The loss of their east Aleppo stronghold would be the worst defeat for rebels since Syria’s conflict erupted more than five years ago.
The opposition has steadily lost territory in recent months to government forces bolstered by a Russian military intervention since September 2015.
Moscow says it is not involved in the Aleppo offensive, but a Russian defence ministry spokesman said Syrian government forces had seized “nearly half the territory occupied by rebels in east Aleppo in recent years”.
“The careful and long-planned operations by the Syrian army have radically changed the situation over the past 24 hours,” said General Igor Konashenkov.
Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed his government to set up mobile field hospitals around Aleppo, the Kremlin said.
A hospital able to serve up to 250 patients a day will be sent to the Aleppo region on Wednesday morning, reports in Russia said.
More than 250 civilians have been killed in the government’s assault on east Aleppo since November 15, including nearly 30 children, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The monitor said at least 10 civilians were killed in a strike in the Bab al-Nayrab district Tuesday and reported ongoing clashes in the Shaar and Tariq al-Bab neighbourhoods.
The Observatory said the civilian exodus continued Tuesday from neighbourhoods now on the front line.
An AFP correspondent said families were forced to sleep in the streets or in unfurnished apartments left empty by fleeing residents.
Rights group Amnesty International urged Syrian authorities to protect civilians in recaptured areas.
“Given the Syrian government’s long and dark history of arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances on a mass scale, it is even more crucial that civilians are protected in newly captured areas of Aleppo city,” said Samah Hadid, Amnesty’s deputy director for campaigns in Beirut.
Save the Children warned the assault was separating families and leaving thousands, including children, homeless and at risk.
“With so many people trapped in an ever-shrinking space, children can be little more than sitting targets for bombs,” said Syria director Sonia Khush.
On the ground, residents expressed despair and uncertainty for the future, after months of food shortages and heavy bombardment.
Syria’s conflict has killed more than 300,000 people and drawn in world powers including a US-led air coalition fighting the Islamic State group.
After a six-week probe, the Pentagon said intelligence errors resulted in a coalition strike that reportedly killed about 90 Syrian government forces in eastern Deir Ezzor in September.
Also Tuesday, at least 1,200 including rebels and their relatives were evacuated from a rebel stronghold near Damascus to the northwest province of Idlib, the Observatory and aid workers said.
Leaders in Khan al-Shih struck a deal with Damascus that would see their town brought back under regime control in exchange for an end to a government siege.
France and Britain, meanwhile, said they would submit to the UN Security Council a resolution for sanctions against Damascus for using chemical weapons.
A joint investigation by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found regime forces used toxic weapons in 2014 and 2015.
And the Turkish army said two of its soldiers were missing in Syria, where it is fighting IS, after the Amaq news agency affiliated with the jihadist group claimed it had taken the pair hostage.

Rwanda opened a formal probe into 20 French officials suspected of playing a role in the 1994 genocide, in a move likely to further sour diplomatic ties with France.
Kigali has long accused France of complicity in the genocide of some 800,000 mostly ethnic Tutsis, at the hands of Hutu extremists, angering Paris and straining relations.
“The inquiry, for now, is focused on 20 individuals whom, according to information gathered so far, are required by the prosecution authority to explain or provide clarity on allegations against them,” said prosecutor general Richard Muhumuza in a statement.
This will enable prosecutors to decide “whether the concerned individuals should be formally charged or not”.
Muhumuza said the relevant French authorities had been contacted and that full cooperation was expected.
The dispute centres on France’s role prior to the genocide as a close ally of the Hutu nationalist regime of Juvenal Habyarimana. The shooting down of his plane over Kigali on April 6, 1994 was the event that triggered 100 days of meticulously planned slaughter.
France is accused of missing or ignoring the warning signs, and of training the soldiers and militiamen who carried out the killings.
And when the genocide was in full swing, it was further accused of using its diplomatic clout to stall effective action.
When it did finally send in troops — in Operation Turquoise — it was accused of only doing so to counter the advance of the Tutsi rebels of Paul Kagame, who is now president, allowing the perpetrators to escape to neighbouring Zaire which later became the Democratic Republic of Congo.
France says its soldiers were only deployed after most of the killing had happened and that their presence helped save thousands of lives.
And French officials insist that any guilt for failing to prevent the genocide is shared by the entire international community, accusing Kagame of raising the issue in a bid to distract attention from what they say is his own poor human rights record.
When contacted by AFP, the French defence ministry referred to a statement issued on November 16 by Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian after a list of 22 high-ranking French officers suspected of involvement was first published by Kigali.
There was “nothing new” in the list, Le Drian said at the time, adding that it was “almost identical to one produced in 2008” and “to say that the French army took park in genocide was a disgraceful lie”.
Although relations between Kigali and Paris were completely frozen from 2006 to 2009, they were on the mend until 2014 when Kagame repeated accusations that French soldiers were both accomplices and “actors” in the bloodbath.
The remarks prompted France to pull out of ceremonies to mark the 20th anniversary of the massacres.
The stormy relationship took an even worse turn when the French judiciary decided in October to re-open an investigation into the shooting down of Habyarimana’s plane to hear testimony from a former general who accuses Kagame of being behind the assassination.
“It is France which should be in the dock,” said Kagame.
In apparent retaliation, Rwanda on November 1 published the list of 22 senior French officers it accuses of being involved in the genocide.

Australian three-time world track champion Jack Bobridge quit the sport Wednesday aged just 27 with rheumatoid arthritis taking a heavy toll.
The reigning Australian national road champion, who also has two silver medals from three Olympics, was diagnosed with the chronic condition in 2010.
He left Europe and a professional contract with Trek-Segafredo in September citing family reasons and fatigue following the Rio Olympics in August.
“Since the (Rio) Games and backing off the training and racing load I?ve found my arthritis has been 100 percent better and I?ve been able to get off all meds (medication) as well,? he told the Adelaide Advertiser.
?Obviously I love the bike, the racing and the lifestyle, but I?ve got a two-year-old (daughter) now and I could drag on for three or four years.
“But come 40 or 50 the damage it?s going to do and the arthritis in my body … I don?t see sport is worth it.”
He added that “to me the decision is pretty easy, and since I made it I haven?t thought twice about it”.
Bobridge won two track world titles in the team pursuit and one in the individual pursuit.
His greatest success on the road was winning a stage of the Eneco Tour in 2010 and the Tour Down Under in 2015.

The National Youth Service (NYS) scandal has taken another new twist when Jubilee MPs on Tuesday accused opposition party leader Raila Odinga and over 20 Cord legislators as being among the major beneficiaries of the multi-billion shillings scam.
The MPs led by Kikuyu MP Kimani Ichung’wa said that Suna East MP Junet Mohamed led the list by acquiring over Sh70 million for the supply of goods to the NYS through dubious procurement processes.
The goods included the supply of beans, rice and biscuits which the MPs claim was illegally smuggled into the country through the Somali port of Kismayu.
The Jubilee MPs said that Mohamed and his sister won several tenders through companies linked to them as a result of the influence of the chairman of the Devolution Ministry’s tender committee, , who coincidentally happens to be the Suna East MP’s brother in law.
over a Sh47 million expenditure at the agency.
Speaking during Citizen’s TV , Ichung’wa said they had evidence that showed a money trail of bank transactions revealing the millions illegally acquired by Mohamed went directly to Raila Odinga.
Mr Mohammed was named by Jubilee lawmakers as one of the directors of Zeigham Enterprises Ltd, a company that supplied NYS with goods worth Sh21.8 million.
 
Fahaza Ltd, a company in which his sister Hafsa Sheikh Nuh is listed as a director, also bagged a contract worth Sh51.8 million, taking the total worth of contracts given to companies linked to the MP to Sh73.6 million.
The Jubilee MPs now want the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate all the Cord legislators who had links to the loss of the NYS funds which run into billions of shillings.
However, Mohamed rubbished the claims claiming the Jubilee MPs were merely engaging in propaganda to shield the failures of the government.
Mohamed said during the Citizen TV live show on Tuesday night.
Mohamed claimed that he was never a shareholder at the companies at the time they were involved in transactions with the NYS.
 
However he did not refuse to deny that at one time he was a shareholder at the companies which the Jubilee MPs claim were linked to the NYS scam.
Mohamed said.
The Suna East legislator further said that his team (Cord) had their own list which revealed that several Jubilee MPs and other senior government officials linked to over 200 companies that were behind corruption scandals in the country.
He added that the leadership of Central Kenya were obsessed with Raila and cannot stop associating his name with every ill that is facing the country.
Mr Mohammed is currently a member of the Public Accounts Committee which is handling investigations into the NYS scam.

For centuries they stood, two monumental ancient statues of Buddha carved into the cliffs of Bamiyan, loved and revered by generations of Afghans — only to be pulverised by the Taliban in an act of cultural genocide.
It felt like the loss of family for many who live and tend their crops nearby — but some 15 years on they are hopeful these awe-inspiring relics can be reconstructed.
But experts are divided on the value of rebuilding the artefacts, with some insisting it is more important to preserve the remains of the entire crumbling site.
Archaeologists and restorers, mostly Afghan, German, Japanese and French, working in the Bamiyan Valley in central Afghanistan will meet from December 1-3 in Munich, Germany.
There they will try to move forward on the issue, as much a matter of the conservation of the UNESCO World Heritage Site as of the memories and culture of a brutalised community.
All Afghans, especially the peasants tending potatoes at the front of the cliffs, mourn the loss of the tutelary silhouettes — the largest, the Salsal, was 56 metres high; its feminine version, the Shamama, 38 metres.
They were blasted in April 2001 by the Taliban, who had taken control of the province and killed thousands of Hazara civilians, a Shiite Muslim minority in Bamiyan.
“For us, they were like parents,” said Hakim Safa, the 27-year-old representative from the Afghan culture ministry selling tickets at the site. “I feel as though I had lost family.”
“In the villages local people very much want the Buddhas to be rebuilt… They are always asking us, when will you be ready to begin?” says Rassoul Chojai, professor of archeology at the University of Bamiyan.
But the statues were so thoroughly destroyed that it is not even clear if they ever could be reconstructed.
UNESCO and the archaeologists have gathered fragments, a clutter of rocks and stones of various sizes. But the bulk of the monuments has simply vanished, reduced to dust.
“The destruction of the great Buddhas is total,” confirms Julio Bendezu-Sarmiento, director of the French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan (DAFA) and member of the committee for the preservation of Bamiyan which will meet in Germany.
The cliff, he says, is “pierced with thousands of decorated caves, connected by stairs, corridors, used in the past by monks and hermits” until the slow arrival of Islam from the 8th to the 11th centuries.
It was the Buddhist history of the area that the Taliban wanted to erase in the name of Islam, when they blew the statues up in 2001.
The explosions left deep cracks along the niches, which over the years have expanded, weathered, the rock crumbling against the elements.
Greatly weakened the cliff threatens collapse, Julio Bendezu-Sarmiento adds.
“The focus for UNESCO is to preserve the remains of the statues,” said Ghula Reza Mohammadi, representative of the UN agency in Bamiyan.
UNESCO has reinforced the niche of the Shamama with the help of Japanese funding, and is now working on that of the Salsal, enmeshed in giant scaffolding.
“Since 2001, German researchers have also worked on protecting the wall murals — there are more than 4,000 caves in Bamiyan and all of them have designs and were painted,” says Ghula Reza.
German restorers, in favour of reconstructing the statues, have already rebuilt the feet of the smaller Buddha, nearly ten metres long.
“We have some fragments of the original Buddhas,” says Bert Praxenthaler, a Bavarian art historian who has worked in Bamiyan since 2003.
“It would be a kind of statue with a lot of gaps and holes of course, but this is the first honourable approach to the history,” he argues. “If we have a really good funding, we could do it in a period of about five years.”
But why bother, wonders Bendezu-Sarmiento: “In history so much has disappeared yet we have still kept the memory, the Buddhas will remain in the collective memory even so,” he says.
“Leaving aside nostalgia, the urgency is rather to prevent it from happening again,” he concluded, citing Palmyra, the Greco-Roman oasis in the Syrian desert devastated in 2015 by the Islamic State group.
The debate surrounding the Buddhas is not only technical, says Masanori Nagaoka, director of cultural heritage at UNESCO in Kabul, arguing that consideration must also be given to ethical, humanitarian and human rights points of view.
“Statues are not just a physical representation… they have meaning for people, to represent their history and their diversity of culture or in depth respect for religious dialogue.
“So if the reconstruction of the Buddha statues would contribute to revitalising such memories or dignity, this has to be (considered),” he added, describing a rebuild as a potential “contribution to a peaceful world.”
The debate will not be decided in Munich, where experts will simply agree on the work to preserve the site — or in Abu Dhabi, where Afghan President Ashraf Ghani will attend a separate conference on safeguarding cultural heritage this weekend.
But the question is already on the agenda of an international conference on Bamiyan next autumn in Tokyo.

Australia’s blue water Sydney to Hobart classic will this year see the domination of eight-time line honours winner Wild Oats challenged by a Scandinavian dark horse and a Korean debut among more Asian entries.
Four supermaxis will tackle the gruelling 628-nautical-mile race among a field of 93, organisers said Wednesday, with local hero Wild Oats the favourite.
Skipper Mark Richards can’t forget last year’s shock retirement with a split mast and said improvements had been made.
“We’ve learnt a lot from last year,” he said at the official launch for the December 26 race.
“Our preparation this year has been fantastic,” including thousands of miles of sailing and some “tweaking”.
Richards has removed the yacht’s horizontal hydrofoil, explaining that a new 11-metre long forward section of the hull negated the need for it. It also makes the vessel 300 kilograms lighter.
Wild Oats XI, which will be racing in its 12th Sydney to Hobart, “is still a great machine,” he added.
Finn Ludde Ingvall took line honours in 2000 and 2004 and he is back for 2016 with Nicorette completely redesigned and renamed CQS.
The 90-foot maxi has grown into a 100-foot supermaxi in a bid to rival the world’s fastest yachts, with legendary New Zealand skipper Chris Dixon at the helm.
Ingvall, who lives in Sydney, rates Wild Oats “the best yacht in the world”, despite its early retirement last year allowing US supermaxi Comanche to win in two days, eight hours, 58 minutes and 30 seconds.
“It’s not the same boat,” he told reporters about CQS. “From the mast forward, it’s new and from the steering backwards it’s new. She’s a very radical thing, incorporating a lot of ideas.
“We should be good in light airs,” he added. “In some conditions we will be up there but we are focusing on taking the boat to the finish line.”
That’s the ambition of most entrants for the 72nd version of the race from Sydney down Australia’s east coast and across the wild Bass Strait to Hobart.
Another rebadged supermaxi is Scallywag, now owned by Hong Kong businessman Seng Huang Lee, which came second in line honours last year as Ragamuffin.
Supermaxi Perpetual Loyal is also back for another tilt after pulling out of the previous two races with damage.
Among 12 international entries, the Korea Ocean Sailing Club has chartered a 52-footer and named it Sonic for the nation’s first Sydney to Hobart.
Team Korea is mostly from Seoul and Busan with experience from the America’s Cup, while skipper Kwangmin ‘Andrew’ Rho contested last year’s race aboard Flying Fish Arctos, the organisers said.
China has two entries for 2016 with Dong Qing back with Ark323 and a new crew after a stormy debut ended in early retirement for the country’s first ever entry last year.
“We did not expect 50-knot winds,” Qing said of the savage southerlies that blasted the race in 2015, with dozens of boats pulling out.
“This year we are going to be better.”
Overall handicap honours went to Australia’s Balance last December with the TP52 competing again, hoping for a second successive crown.
“We will be doing our damnedest to get there in one piece,” said owner Paul Clitheroe.

Businessman Jovenel Moise’s election as Haiti’s next president was challenged by losing rival candidates, signaling more political upheaval in the troubled nation as sporadic protests erupted in the capital.
Violence broke out in some of Port-au-Prince’s poorest neighborhoods, which were carried by Maryse Narcisse’s Fanmi Lavalas party, against Moise, the man former president Michel Martelly chose to represent his party.
Police launched tear gas grenades to disperse a crowd of hundreds of her supporters who called the vote an “electoral coup” and reacted to the advancing officers by throwing stones.
“We didn’t vote in secret. All of the working-class neighborhoods in the country… voted for Maryse, but the results they announced were an electoral coup,” said Rose-Marie Rosilus.
Rosilus lives in Bel Air, a neighborhood that has historically been a bastion of former leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who heads the Lavalas party.
“We will stay out in the streets until the electoral council gives us our true results,” added Rosilus, who brought lemons to alleviate the effect of the tear gas.
There were no reports of violence elsewhere in the capital or across the country.
Moise, a 48-year-old political novice and entrepreneur who worked in agriculture mostly growing bananas, earning him the nickname “banana man,” wants to lift the Caribbean country out of poverty by reviving its agricultural sector.
“We will need to mobilize all the resources of the country, as I repeated during my campaign: men, land, sun and rivers to put food on people’s plates and money in their pockets,” Moise said late Monday, shortly after the preliminary results of the first-round election were announced.
But his rivals’ challenges over the vote’s legitimacy could run those plans into the ground.
The preliminary results showed that Moise won the election outright, garnering 55.7 percent of the vote, thus barring the need for a second round. But he lacks much popularity, with only 21 percent of eligible voters casting their ballots.
Jude Celestin, who ran as a candidate of the opposition LAPEH and came in second with 19.52 percent, is refusing to accept the outcome, along with fellow candidates Moise Jean-Charles (11.04 percent) and Narcisse (8.99 percent).
“We are saying there was cheating and we will see who cheated,” Celestin told AFP, without naming Moise directly.
Indicating he would pursue the matter in the courts, Celestin claimed the results “do not reflect the popular vote.”
But election observers from the Organization of American States said the results were “in line” with data they collected at polling stations.
The OAS electoral mission “calls upon all actors to respect the will of the Haitian citizens, expressed emphatically through the polls,” it said in a statement.
Interim leader Jocelerme Privert urged for all parties to remain calm in order to “safeguard peace and political stability.”
In a statement from his office, Privert said the elections were “crucial for Haiti’s political, economic and social future. It’s an important step toward political and institutional stabilization in the country.”
Provisional Electoral Council president Leopold Berlanger cautioned that the results were preliminary and final results would not be confirmed until December 29.
Haitian law offers candidates the opportunity to challenge the results in electoral courts.
The drawn-out proceedings are slowing down the return to constitutional order in a desperately poor country already beset by political upheaval.
Three of the council’s nine members refused to sign the result, signaling a potential conflict over the outcome.
The long-delayed November 20 election took place without major incident. Haiti’s vote was originally held in October 2015, but the results were scrapped after an independent commission found massive fraud.
Moise was initially said to have won the October 2015 election’s first round with approximately 33 percent to 25 percent for Celestin, who denounced the results as a “ridiculous farce” before they were scrapped.
Fatigued by the long-delayed vote, the majority of Haitians report that they do not believe an election can lift Haiti — where more than 60 percent of the population survives on less than $2 per day — out of extreme poverty.
Nearly 6.2 million people were eligible to vote in the Americas’ poorest country, parts of which are still struggling to recover from a devastating hurricane.
More than 800,000 people in Haiti currently need emergency food assistance, according to the United Nations.

England captain Alastair Cook is looking forward to a rare week-long break in a hectic playing schedule after the heavy third Test defeat against India in Mohali Tuesday.
Virat Kohli’s side won by eight wickets to take an unassailable 2-0 lead in the five-Test series.
But England’s players are looking to unwind with some welcome down time in Dubai before making the short trip from the Gulf resort city to Mumbai for the fourth Test, which begins on December 8.
“The break comes at a very good time, obviously, after three back-to-back Test matches,” Cook told reporters after the defeat.
Some of the England squad have been on duty since landing in Bangladesh on September 30 for three one-day internationals followed by the 1-1 draw in the Test series there.
Cook himself has spent just 18 hours with his new-born daughter after dashing home from the Bangladesh tour for her birth.
“We have this week off and I think, most people going to Dubai,” said Cook. “Mentally it will be break from cricket. We will come back little bit more refreshed.”
Cook’s team has endured tough couple of months after losing a Test to Bangladesh for the first time and are now staring at a series defeat against top-ranked India.
But Cook remembered that four years ago in India England came back from 1-0 down to win the four-Test series 2-1 and said that if they show greater consistency they can still save the series.
“The challenge is try and put in that performance in which consistently, over five days, we play well.
“We have done it in one game (the first Test in Rajkot), we haven’t done it in the other two,” said Cook.
Cook said it was difficult to compare with the 2012 tour, because the two teams have changed character since.
“The India we played in 2012 was different, probably an ageing team compared to now,” Cook said, adding that his current side were still learning how to tackle unfamiliar sub-continent conditions with low, turning pitches.
“In 2012 we were a lot more experienced and had played a lot more in the sub-continent over the three years before that.
“This side, only two in the top order (Joe Root and Cook himself) have played more than one or two games in the sub-continent before we played in Bangladesh. That’s probably the difference.”

Tourists looking to drink daiquiris at El Floridita, a favorite haunt of legendary US author Ernest Hemingway in Havana, found the entrance gated shut.
Others hoping to eat dinner while watching a music and dance show at El Guajirito restaurant stared at an empty stage with a closed curtain.
As Cuba observes nine days of mourning following the death of communist icon Fidel Castro on Friday, tourists have been wandering unusually quiet streets in Havana, devoid of street musicians.
Authorities have banned alcohol sales, while shows have been cancelled, leaving foreign visitors with few options for entertainment (though some restaurants ignored the prohibition).
A Spanish couple was sipping lemonade at the Bilbao bar in Old Havana instead of one of the many bottles of rum or beer on display behind the counter.
“As a tourist, you would like to drink a beer, but it’s understandable,” said Vicente Pavon, 28, a section chief at a home improvement company in Madrid.
“It’s a historic moment that you’ll remember. In a few years, we’ll be able to say that we were here” when Castro died, said Pavon, who nevertheless would have liked to drink a daiquiri next to the life-size bronze statue of Hemingway at El Floridita.
Others like Pavon took the booze and music bans in stride, appreciating that they landed on the island at a momentous time in history, as Cubans bid farewell to a man who ruled the island for almost half a century.
“It would be a different experience (if Castro had not died) but it’s still a life-changing event,” said Amanda Lecuyer, a 29-year-old esthetician from Toronto who went to the usually bustling La Bodeguita del Medio, only to find the bar closed behind a wooden gate.
Before coming to Havana, she and a friend were listening to a Justin Bieber song on her speakers at a pool in the resort town of Varadero, until the staff “asked us to turn it down.”
Americans who came on a “people-to-people” tour to learn more about Cuban music ended up listening to lectures from musicians instead of hearing the sounds of son or salsa.
JuTina Singletary, a 55-year-old teacher from the southern US state of Louisiana, seized on the historic moment and went to Revolution Square, where hundreds of thousands of Cubans paid tribute to Castro at a memorial.
She stood in line for four hours to enter the monument of independence hero Jose Marti, where a black-and-white picture of Fidel as a young guerrillero was put on display for mourners.
“I can always come back for the music, but never for this experience,” Singletary said.
Other Americans said their visit during Castro’s remembrance events have allowed them to learn more about the former leader, opposite to the image he has in the United States of a dictator who jailed dissidents.
“I have a different understanding of Fidel. I see that he has done good things,” said Sandi Rockers, a 52-year-old public accountant from New Mexico, citing the free health care and education available on the communist island.
Americans have come to Cuba in droves since US President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro decided to restore ties in December 2014.
While the decades-old US embargo still forbids Americans to travel to Cuba as regular tourists, they can visit under special permits and Obama has removed much of the bureaucracy to make it easier to visit the island.
Almost 137,000 Americans traveled to Cuba in the first half of the year, an 80 percent increase from the same period in 2015, according to Cuban government figures.
But some worried that President-elect Donald Trump will carry out his threat this week of halting the US-Cuban detente if the government doesn’t offer “a better deal” to its people.
“What Obama established with the Cuban people is valuable and should continue,” said Brian Weaver, a 40-year-old oral surgeon from Ohio who arrived Monday with three other friends.
As they walked to a cafe in Old Havana, his friend Eric Buck said he never thought he would step foot in Cuba in his lifetime.
“To take a step back as a nation would be sad,” the 40-year-old dentist said. “It’s neat for Americans to be able to come here.”

A token currency issued in Zimbabwe this week to ease critical cash shortages has brought little relief as desperate customers queue for hours to withdraw money while some traders reject the new notes.
The central bank on Monday issued $10 million in US dollar-equivalent “bond notes”, ignoring resistance from citizens and companies who feared a return to the days of hyperinflation.
But a day later, taxi driver Adrian Nyakusvipa said the new currency had brought no relief to his painfully slow business.
“We thought there would be a difference after the introduction of bond notes but nothing has changed so far,” Nyakusvipa told AFP.
“I have been parked here since morning without ferrying a single customer.”
“It’s lunch time which is supposed to be the busiest time of the day and I am lying here in the car.”
Zimbabwe abandoned its own currency in 2009 after rampant hyperinflation, which peaked at 500 billion percent, rendered the local dollar useless.
The adoption of foreign currencies like the US dollar and the South African rand brought relative economic stability.
But the gains were soon lost as the government pursued aggressive policies that scared off investors, including indigenisation laws forcing foreign-owned companies to sell majority stakes to locals.
The cash shortage has exacerbated the situation in recent months, with the government unable to pay soldiers and civil servants on time, and customers camping out at bank entrances overnight, desperately hoping to get hold of the little cash available.
It was these shortages that prompted the central bank to introduce the bond notes — officially a parallel currency to the greenback — which the government says is backed by a $200-million dollar facility from the African Export-Import Bank.
But when the plans were announced in May, citizens and pressure groups took to the streets, fearing a return to the days of hyperinflation when shop prices could jump several times in a single day.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai called the move a desperate attempt by a government that had run out of ideas to tackle an “unprecedented crisis”.
The new currency, which closely resembles the former Zimbabwe dollar, comes in $2 notes and $1 coins.
And so far, its reception has been mixed.
Standing in line outside a bank in the capital, Lynely Mabona worried the new currency could be used to wipe out her US dollar bank balance.
“I have been waiting here for hours and I will only leave when the bank closes,” she told AFP.
“All I want is to get as much of my US balance as I can out of the bank.”
Some banks had already run out of US dollars and were giving out only bond notes.
An AFP correspondent also found that some fuel stations were refusing payment in bond notes.
But across Harare, a popular saying became the common refrain: “We have no choice but to dance to the tune being played.”
A cartoon in the state-run Herald newspaper on Tuesday summed it up as two women regarded a newborn baby before them named ‘Bond Note’.
It was “ugly” and “useless”, said one woman.
“Cute baby!” remarked the other. “I bet you have a future.”

Key dates in the 22-year regime of Yahya Jammeh, who has ruled The Gambia with an iron fist since 1994 and is seeking a fifth term at an election Thursday.
On July 22, 1994, Jammeh, then aged 29, leads a group of young army officers in the bloodless overthrow of Dawda Jawara, Gambia’s first president who has been in power for nearly 30 years. Jammeh is made chairman of an Armed Forces Provisional Ruling Council and bans political activity. A coup is foiled in November and numerous attempted bids to overthrow him are reported in the following years.
On September 26, 1996, Jammeh wins a presidential election but observers express doubts about the transparency of the vote.
On January 2, 1997, legislative elections won by Jammeh’s party complete the return to civilian rule after 29 months of the military regime.
Jammeh is re-elected three times, in 2001, 2006 and 2011.
On December 30, 2014, Jammeh’s forces foil a heavily-armed attack by disaffected soldiers on the presidential palace in the capital Banjul, while the leader is visiting Dubai.
Three soldiers accused of being involved in the attack are sentenced to death, and three others to life in prison after a secret trial before a military tribunal, according to Amnesty International and the military.
On April 14, 2016, a senior figure in Gambia’s main opposition United Democratic Party (UDP), Solo Sandeng, is arrested by riot police when leading a demonstration for political reform. He dies in custody.
Two days later, a second round of demonstrations takes place, with supporters demanding answers over Sandeng’s death. Security forces clamp down on demonstrators and arrest UDP chief Ousainou Darboe, a human rights lawyer, and other party leaders.
On July 20, Darboe and about 30 other co-accused are sentenced to three years in jail for six offences relating to the April 16 protest.
On August 23, UDP official Ebrima Solo Kurumah dies in custody, the second opposition figure to die in detention this year.
On May 28, 2016 Amnesty International accuses the regime of “murder” and criticises the passivity of Gambia’s West African neighbours over the deteriorating rights situation.
On November 2, Human Rights Watch says intimidation of opposition parties, media repression and politicised security forces have “all but extinguished” the chance of a free and fair election on Thursday.

A reform-driven Sebastian Coe and drugs-tainted Russia will again be in the spotlight of athletics’ world governing body when the IAAF gathers for three days of crunch meetings starting Thursday.
A crucial part of the opening IAAF Council meeting will be dedicated to the latest update from Norwegian Rune Andersen, the head of the IAAF Taskforce looking into the steps Russia is taking to combat doping.
The International Association of Athletics Federations first enforced a ban on Russian athletes in international competition in November 2015 after a bombshell World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) report unveiled systematic state-sponsored doping and corruption.
Andersen will report to IAAF’s decision-making body whether he thinks Russia have since met the reinstatement conditions set down. The initial ban has twice been extended, in March and June this year.
It was Andersen’s latter Taskforce report in Vienna that scuppered Russian athletes’ chances of competing at the Rio Games, despite a last-ditch campaign to overthrow the ban led by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin has in recent days, however, approved a law criminalising doping in sports, while Russian Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Mutko has promised anti-doping inspectors full access to military cities which are normally closed to members of the public although often listed as training bases by many Russian athletes.
Staying with the anti-doping theme, Coe will on Saturday preside over a Special IAAF Congress, a one-issue meeting concentrating on the governance structure reform proposals presented in his ‘Time for Change’ document.
The reforms have already been given wholesale support by the IAAF Athletes Commission, whose members said they believed that the reforms would “set and enforce higher ethical standards and enable athletics to regain the credibility and trust it deserves”.
Coe has gone out of his way to ensure his reform process is widely understood, having embarked on a roadshow in October and November that took in the Dominican Republic, Chile, Portugal, Australia, Qatar and South Africa.
The Briton, twice an Olympic 1500m gold medallist, is pushing for an independent drugs testing regime as part of his overhaul of world athletics, saying that “results management” has been a failure given “national interest involved”.
He is proposing an “independent Athletics Integrity Unit”, which will be responsible for doping matters, taking powers away from national associations. The unit would also look into illegal betting and transfers of allegiance.
Other mooted reforms include a restructuring of the IAAF Council so that it has 50 percent female membership, new checks and balances on the president, and new vetting procedures on individuals.
The proposed changes, which need a two-thirds’ majority to be passed at Saturday’s vote, have been brought about by the scandal which continues to engulf athletics.
In the latest revelation, a weekend report by Germany’s ARD television and France’s Le Monde newspaper said the wanted son of ousted IAAF president Lamine Diack took millions of euros from Russian competitors in return for “total protection” from failed doping tests.
Six athletes each paid between 300,000 and 700,000 euros ($318,000-$740,000) to top officials including Papa Massata Diack who is wanted by French authorities but in hiding in his native Senegal, the report said.
His father, Lamine Diack, who was charged after standing down as IAAF president in August 2015, is under house arrest in France.
“The organised cover-up of suspected doping in the world of track and field has as such assumed a previously unimagined scale,” said ARD. “And once again, it is primarily athletes from one nation under scrutiny: Russia.”
Sandwiched between the two IAAF meetings come the IAAF Athletics Awards, which were cancelled last year in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris.
Fresh from securing an unprecedented third consecutive treble of Olympic golds at the Rio Games, Usain Bolt is a hot favourite to walk away with the men’s Athlete of the Year award from Mo Farah and Wayde van Niekerk.
In the women’s category, 10,000 m Olympic champion Almaz Ayana from Ethiopia is up against double sprint champion Elaine Thompson of Jamaica and the Olympic hammer thrower champion, Poland’s Anita Wlodarczyk.

Nicaraguan police fired teargas and rubber bullets at a convoy of people protesting a giant cross-country canal project that threatens to boot them off their land, according to organizers.
The incident occurred in Nueva Guinea, 300 kilometers (nearly 200 miles) southeast of the capital Managua, as they tried to drive to the city to stage their protest, said Monica Lopez, a lawyer leading a foundation that is helping the rural protesters.
“Many” protesters were wounded and beaten, she said, without giving a number.
Images on social media taken by protesters and local journalists showed the demonstrators getting out of their trucks to clear obstacles placed on the road.
“They shot at us (with rubber bullets)… burned the trucks and wanted to burn us too,” another protest leader, Francisca Ramirez, told broadcast media.
Nicaragua’s government has contracted Chinese firm HKND to build and run a canal running across the country, from the Caribbean coast to the Pacific one, in a $50 billion project aimed at rivaling the century-old canal in Panama.
No excavation work has been carried out so far, and many observers question whether the canal will ever be built.
The International Federation for Human Rights last month said the government of President Daniel Ortega was trampling people’s rights with the project, and police and soldiers had “severely repressed” protests. It urged him to drop the canal plan.

The man who appears to have won the first round of Haiti’s presidential election, Jovenel Moise, says he wants to lift the Caribbean country out of poverty by reviving its agricultural sector.
Moise, a 48-year-old political novice and entrepreneur who worked in agriculture mostly growing bananas, has been nicknamed “banana man” since former president Michel Martelly chose him to represent the PHTK party.
“We will need to mobilize all the resources of the country, as I repeated during my campaign: men, land, sun and rivers to put food on people’s plates and money in their pockets,” Moise said late Monday, shortly after the preliminary results of the first-round election were announced.
The preliminary results showed that Moise won the election outright, garnering 55.7 percent of the vote, but he lacks much popularity, with only 21 percent of eligible voters casting their ballots.
A candidate who wins more than half of the ballots cast in the first round is the victor, preventing the election from going to a second round.
Jude Celestin, who ran as a candidate of the opposition LAPEH and came in second with 19.52 percent, has joined fellow candidates Moise Jean-Charles (11.04 percent) and Maryse Narcisse (8.99 percent) in challenging the outcome.
“We are saying there was cheating and we will see who cheated,” Celestin told AFP, without naming Moise directly.
Violence broke out Tuesday in some of Port-au-Prince’s poorest neighborhoods, which were carried by Narcisse’s Fanmi Lavalas party.
Police launched teargas grenades to disperse a crowd of hundreds of her supporters who called the vote an “electoral coup” and reacted to the advancing officers by throwing stones.
“We didn’t vote in secret. All of the working-class neighborhoods in the country… voted for Maryse, but the results they announced were an electoral coup,” said Rose-Marie Rosilus, who lives in Bel Air, a neighborhood that has historically been a bastion of former leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who heads the Lavalas party.
“We will stay out in the streets until the electoral council gives us our true results,” added Rosilus, who brought lemons to alleviate the effect of the teargas.
Provisional Electoral Council president Leopold Berlanger cautioned that the results were preliminary and final results would not be confirmed until December 29.
Haitian law offers candidates the opportunity to challenge the results in electoral courts.
The drawn-out proceedings are slowing down the return to constitutional order in a desperately poor country already beset by political upheaval.
Three of the council’s nine members refused to sign the results announced on Monday, signaling a potential conflict over the outcome.
“There were no demonstrations of joy in Haiti. When a candidate wins with more than 55 percent, there should be spontaneous demonstrations by people who are out in the streets because they are happy,” Celestin said.
The fact that there were no such public revelries “means that people do not agree with the results which do not reflect the popular vote,” he said.
“It is not just a fight to narrow the gap, but rather to demonstrate that a candidate cheated and therefore must be punished as the electoral decree mandates, which is to say he should be removed from the process if necessary,” Celestin said, indicating he would pursue the matter in the courts.
The long-delayed November 20 election took place without major incident. Haiti’s vote was originally held in October 2015, but the results were scrapped after an independent commission found massive fraud.
Moise was initially said to have won the October 2015 election’s first round with approximately 33 percent to 25 percent for Celestin, who denounced the results as a “ridiculous farce” before they were scrapped.
Fatigued by the long-delayed vote, the majority of Haitians report that they do not believe an election can lift Haiti — where more than 60 percent of the population survives on less than $2 per day — out of extreme poverty.
Nearly 6.2 million people were eligible to vote in the Americas’s poorest country, parts of which are still struggling to recover from a devastating hurricane.
More than 800,000 people in Haiti currently need emergency food assistance, according to the United Nations.

Former coach Barry Bennell, who is at the centre of a scandal rocking English football, was on Tuesday charged with eight counts of child abuse, prosecutors said.
Bennell, who has already served three jail terms for previous child sex offences, has faced a slew of new allegations by at least 20 former footballers spanning three decades beginning in the 1970s when he was working for Crewe Alexandra, Manchester City and Stoke City.
“Following a review of the evidence, in accordance with the Code for Crown Prosecutors, Mr Bennell, 62, has today been charged with eight offences of sexual assault against a boy under the age of 14,” said a statement from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
Bennell, who it was revealed on Monday had to be hospitalised when he was found unconscious in a hotel near London, will appear in court on December 14.
The latest charges stem from Cheshire Police but six other police forces are investigating accusations made against Bennell in a scandal Football Association Chairman Greg Clarke has called “the greatest crisis” in English football he could recall.
Former Newcastle player Derek Bell, who waived his anonymity to the Guardian, claimed he was subjected to “horrendous” sexual abuse at his local boys football club in the 1970s.
“It was pure, unbelievable heartache. Thinking my mam and dad were next door and he was performing these sexual acts. He had groomed us for a couple of years and he thought it was normal,” Bell said.
“Deep down in my mind I knew it wasn’t normal, but I was so scared to speak and come out and say it wasn’t right.”
Former Northern Ireland international Mark Williams spoke out, with Sky News revealing he had waived his anonymity to describe his torment.
“My life has been affected irreversibly both personally and professionally and it has been soul-destroying to carry this burden for 30 years,” he said.
Police Scotland have also confirmed they have launched a probe following abuse allegations north of the border.
The FA has also launched its own internal review appointing leading lawyer Kate Gallafent, an expert in child protection, to head it up.
The British Government announced on Tuesday they will bring the police and the FA together for a meeting on the developing scandal.
Clarke took over as FA chairman in August and has already had to deal with the removal of Sam Allardyce as England coach over comments he made in a newspaper sting and the ‘poppygate’ row with FIFA.
He told Sky News it was time to finally deal with the issues after they had been ignored.
“It’s certainly the biggest (crisis) I can remember,” said Clarke.
“I think the moral consequences of failing to deal with some of these issues in the past we must get to the bottom of.”
Clarke doesn’t know if the FA at the time deliberately turned a blind eye to the goings on although a reporter who made a documentary about sex abuse in football for Channel Four in 1997 has claimed there is a FA report from 2005 detailing 250 victims and spread over a number of clubs.
“I don’t know if there was a cover-up or not, I really don’t know,” said Clarke.
Clarke told the BBC the FA review would not seek to speak to alleged victims, in agreement with the police, nor would he confer with his predecessors as chairman.
Meanwhile, a newspaper report on Tuesday claimed Chelsea made a secret payment to a former youth team player who accused a talent scout, the late Eddie Heath, of sexually assaulting him during the 1970s.
An undisclosed sum was given to the unnamed former player on the condition the alleged abuse would not be made public, The Telegraph reported, citing a source.
The player went to the club around three years ago and has also spoken to the Metropolitan Police, the newspaper added.
Ahead of the report being published Chelsea announced they have retained an external law firm to carry out an investigation concerning an individual employed by the club in the 1970s, who is now dead.
“The club has contacted the FA to ensure that all possible assistance is provided as part of their wider investigation,” a Chelsea statement read.
“This will include providing the FA with any relevant information arising out of the club’s investigation.”

Among the stalwarts of Barcelona’s near decade of dominance of Spanish football there is no one that stokes the ire of Real Madrid like Gerard Pique.
Pique is Barca’s best defender, leader, possible future president and principal provocateur to the Madrid fans and media.
Yet, ahead of the latest meeting between the Spanish giants on Saturday, Barcelona, who trail Madrid by six points at the top of La Liga, need the positive side of Pique’s game and character more than ever.
“With you it all began” are words the former Manchester United man has become synonomous with in Spain.
His thanks to Colombian musician Kevin Roldan at Barca’s treble celebrations in 2015 for performing at Cristiano Ronaldo’s 30th birthday party that precipitated a Madrid collapse in La Liga sparked a wicked backlash.
Pique was booed for months after even when playing for Spain.
However, the roles may now be reversed. Madrid’s revival under coach Zinedine Zidane in 2016 began when Pique opened the scoring the last time the sides met in April.
When Pique nodded Barca in front, the Catalans were set to move a mammoth 13 points clear in the title race.
Instead, Real battled back to win 2-1, missed out on the title to Barca by just one point on the final day of the season and haven’t lost in La Liga since.
Whilst the captaincy at the Camp Nou is awarded based on longevity, Pique is undoubtedly the leader of this Barca team now shorn of the likes Carles Puyol and Xavi Hernandez.
“On Saturday we have more to play for than Madrid, they can lose, we can’t,” he said on Monday. “We always need to believe in this team.”
Often chosen to face the media in the most difficult times, Pique also sets the tone on and off the field for a Barca side that has lost some of its identity this season.
The champions had less possession in a match they didn’t win for the first time since 2008 in being thoroughly outplayed by Real Sociedad in a 1-1 draw on Sunday.
“The performance at Anoeta was a disaster,” said Pique, who was brought through the club’s famed youth academy alongside Lionel Messi before returning to Barca in 2008 after a brief spell in England.
“He expresses himself wonderfully. He has a great ability to communicate,” was Barca boss Luis Enrique’s reaction to Pique’s recent admission that he sees himself as a future Barca president rather than coach.
“I would vote for him,” added Manchester City boss and still Barca member Pep Guardiola.
Pique is far from all talk. Current Barca president Josep Maria Bartomeu admitted the club’s 220 million euro ($236 million) shirt sponsorship with Japanese online retailer Rakuten was initiated by a dinner set up by Pique and his world famous Colombian pop star partner Shakira.
However, his outspoken nature has often caused a backlash.
Pique has openly supported a campaign for Catalonia to be given a referendum on independence.
In October he announced his decision to retire from international football after the 2018 World Cup after being falsely accused of cutting the colours of the Spanish flag off his shirt in the latest of series of spurious controversies questioning his commitment to play for Spain.
In a match always charged with political as well as sporting tension, Spanish eyes will be peeled on Pique’s performance as much as Messi and Ronaldo.

Brazil’s Senate approved the cornerstone of an austerity program aimed at putting the country’s finances in order, but violent clashes between police and protesters highlighted growing tensions.
The upper house easily passed the measure — a 20-year government spending freeze — by 61 to 14 votes. The measure will still have to be put to a second later vote to become law.
“This constitutional amendment is fundamental for controlling public spending,” said Senate Speaker Renan Calheiros, a key figure in center-right President Michel Temer’s PMDB party.
Temer says the freeze, which he wants followed by even more controversial pension reform and possible cutbacks, is needed to prevent Latin America’s biggest economy from bankruptcy.
“People think public money belongs to nobody, but in reality it belongs to us all and we can’t spend more than we collect,” agreed Senator Jose Reguffe.
But violent scenes outside the Senate in the capital Brasilia underlined fears in some sectors that austerity will just worsen conditions in a society already suffering from a deep recession.
As crowds of protesters converged on the legislature, riot police fired tear gas and stun grenades. Squads of officers occasionally beat and kicked isolated demonstrators.
Some demonstrators hurled objects at police, turning over a car and setting fire to at least two others. Windows were broken at several ministries.
Thick clouds of tear gas eventually drove away the crowd — estimated by police to reach 10,000 people — but small groups continued to confront the security forces, throwing back tear gas canisters and attempting to block an avenue.
The tensions came amid national mourning after a plane crash late Monday in Colombia killed much of the southern Brazilian Chapecoense football team and 20 Brazilian journalists, among the more than 70 people who perished.
Flags outside Congress were at half-mast and earlier Temer declared three days of mourning.
In the lower house of Congress, deputies were preparing to vote on a controversial anti-corruption law. The bill would toughen penalties for illegal campaign funds, a major problem in Brazil.
However, there was uproar last week when deputies tried to change the text to include what would have amounted to an amnesty for any politicians who had accepted illegal campaign funds up until now.
In the face of mounting public pressure, Temer announced that he would veto such a bill. But the episode only deepened ordinary Brazilians’ distrust of their politicians.
Among the demonstrators was 21-year-old Gabriel Siqueira, who said that austerity would mean stifling his education and hopes for building a future.
“I am an economics student. I have grants but the grants are always being cut. I want to educate myself, to do a master’s, but it gets harder and harder to study when they vote for these kind of things,” he told AFP outside Congress.
“I hope the senators stop to think a bit about what’s happening here before they press the button.”
Temer came to power this year after the bruising impeachment of president Dilma Rousseff. Temer has said he has a mandate to move Brazil away from Rousseff’s leftist policies, but opponents accuse him of lacking legitimacy.
The latest unemployment figures showed about 12 million people are out of work, or 11.8 percent.
The economy shrank 3.8 percent in 2015 and market estimates are pointing to another slip of almost 3.5 percent in 2016, with weak growth returning next year.

Troubled Fijian rugby league star Semi Radradra was forced to surrender his passport Wednesday over domestic violence charges, as a touted move to French union side Toulon was thrown into further doubt.
The Parramatta Eels winger failed to appear for a Sydney court hearing into the allegations involving his ex-partner Perina Ting on Monday with a magistrate giving him until Wednesday to turn up or face an arrest warrant.
Radradra, who denies the allegations, flew back from Fiji, where he was visiting his ill father, and briefly appeared in court.
Magistrate Tim Keady told him to hand over his passport in order for his bail to continue until his next appearance in February.
The legal drama played out just days after cashed-up Toulon claimed to have signed Radradra for the 2017-18 Top 14 season on a one-year deal with a one-year extension clause.
His coach George Christodoulou on Tuesday said the French rugby union powerhouse had “jumped the gun” and Eels chief executive Bernie Gurr on Wednesday assured fans Radradra would be at the club in 2017.
“The thing for our club is he’s contracted through to the 31st of October, 2017,” Gurr told Sky Sports Radio. “So, mate, he’ll be with us in ’17.
“I spoke to Semi’s manager. He definitively said that no contract has been signed.”
The powerful 24-year-old was voted player of the year in the Australian National Rugby League in 2014 and 2015 and was also top try scorer for 2015.
He came through the ranks as a union player and has also played sevens for Fiji.
If the Toulon deal pans out, he will join several Australians there including James O’Connor, Matt Giteau and Drew Mitchell with the team rebuilding under English coach Mike Ford.

Gareth Southgate is expected to be approved as the new England manager by Football Association chiefs on Wednesday, according to British media reports.
Southgate has been in interim charge since replacing Sam Allardyce in September after he was forced out just 67 days into his reign following a Daily Telegraph investigation into corruption in football.
The 46-year-old Southgate has made it clear he wants the job and, given the lack of other quality candidates, is believed to have done enough during his four games in charge to convince the FA to hand him the post on a permanent basis.
Southgate’s position should be ratified during an FA board meeting on Wednesday, although an official announcement is unlikely to be immediate.
The former Middlesbrough boss, who would become England’s third manager this year following the departures of Roy Hodgson and Allardyce, spoke to a five-man panel at St George’s Park last Monday after the end of his interim reign.
FA chairman Greg Clarke, chief executive Martin Glenn, technical director Dan Ashworth, former England player Graeme Le Saux and League Managers’ Association chairman Howard Wilkinson were all involved.
While it was billed as an interview it was more of a discussion about Southgate’s vision of the England team.
Glenn had previously confirmed Southgate was in a strong position and the former England defender wanted the job.
During his brief tenure Southgate has already had to deal with controversy with captain Wayne Rooney pictured mingling with guests at the hotel where England were based during his free time following the 3-0 World Cup qualifying win over Scotland.
Newspaper reports suggested the skipper was drunk and made an unscheduled appearance at a wedding reception, with chief executive Glenn promising an investigation into the conduct of all players and staff during their free time.
Southgate was unbeaten in his four games, winning two and drawing two, including this month’s win over Scotland which left England top of Group F as they bid to reach the 2018 World Cup.
England also beat Malta and drew in Slovenia before a 2-2 friendly draw with Spain in Southgate’s last game, when they squandered a two-goal lead in the final minutes at Wembley.
Southgate’s backroom team will be discussed at the board meeting, with Chelsea assistant coach Steve Holland set to be handed a full-time role with the senior national side.
The FA must also look at the age group set-ups with under-20 manager Aidy Boothroyd having temporarily stepped up to replace Southgate, who had previously served as under-21 boss.