Month: November 2016

Biira has been in detention for over 12 hours after she was arrested for sharing live updates on the storming of King Wesley Mumbere’s palace by Uganda People Defense Force (UPDF) commandos.
Also Read:
Ugandan ChimpReports says that the KTN journalist was picked from her uncle’s residence and taken to Kasese police station. She was arrested alongside five other people.
Biira who hails from Kasese District, had travelled to Uganda to get married to her husband, Newton Kungu, in a traditional wedding held over the past weekend.
 
The newlywed KTN anchor has been detained at Kasese police station with 139 royal guards who were arrested during the raid at the king’s palace.
Kasese police station has been a beehive of activities as relatives, friends and journalists camp outside to witness the unfolding of events.

 
A heartbreaking photo of Joy Doreen Biira walking barefoot at Kasese police station has sent Kenyans to strongly condemn President Yuweri Museveni and is dictatorial regime.
 
Photojournalist Atulinda Allan shared the photo of Biira in police custody as he confirmed that she hadn’t been released as claimed by some people.
 Atulinda Allan tweeted.
 
 
 

While the Toyota Prado remained intact save for a few scratches the 30 Million the 911 Turbo S 2016 car was wrecked. Fortunately, John escaped unhurt and was seen making some phone calls at the accident scene.
A scene that had people gathering to look at the 30Million Kshs car that had just been wrecked and the Prado that survived having 1600 Kgs of Aluminum and steel ram into its rear end.

Also Read:
The incident which took place at Museum Hill earned him a slot in jail for drunk driving. He was released on bond on Friday before going back to Central police station on Saturday morning to pick his car in a Porsche Kenya breakdown services vehicle.
Additional Reporting by
 

England head coach Eddie Jones has called for the media from his native Australia to show “respect” ahead of the two countries’ year-ending showdown at Twickenham on Saturday.
Jones, whose side are chasing a record-equalling 14th straight win, branded Australian press coverage during England’s 3-0 series whitewash Down Under in June “demeaning, disrespectful and disgusting”.
His main target was ex-Australia flanker turned reporter Stephen Hoiles, who apologised for an innuendo-laden post-match question, and Jones is bracing himself for more of the same.
“Steve Hoiles will find something for sure,” Jones said, in comments published by British newspapers on Monday.
“I think you should always be respectful. The game’s built around traditions of respect and I think you should be respectful.
“We’ve all got a part to play — players, coaches, fans, media, sponsors. We’ve all got to be respectful.
“Respect is why the game of rugby continues to grow and when you’re disrespectful to the game, the game falters. And you can’t afford to do that. I’m serious about it.”
Since being humbled by Australia in the group phase of last year’s World Cup on home soil, England have recorded three impressive wins over Michael Cheika’s team.
But Australia bounced back to finish second in the 2016 Rugby Championship, the annual Southern Hemisphere rugby tournament, and were on course for a Grand Slam over the home nations until last Saturday’s 27-24 loss to Ireland in Dublin.
“Having said all I’ve said, Australia are probably the most improved side in world rugby,” Jones said.
“What they’ve done throughout the Rugby Championship and then on tour here is quite brilliant.
“Their attacks become a lot more varied, their alignment is better in attack, defensively they’re making better decisions and key players have come back.”
He added: “Australia’s will to win is going to be enormously high. Our challenge is to make sure our will to win is higher than theirs.
“Tactically we’ll beat them, but we’ve got to have a greater will to win than them. We’ve got to raise our efforts from this week.
“This is a one-off game against Australia — the 3-0 series win has nothing to do with it.”

The Kenyan Taxi industry is set for another round of cutthroat price wars after Little Cab announced a reduction of its price by almost a third.
Making the announcement at the end of last week, the Safaricom cab hailing app service revealed its new price per Kilometer will be Ksh.30 down from Ksh.55.
 
There will be no flat base charge while the left time charges remain at Ksh.4 per minute.
This move sees Little Cab become the cheapest service in the industry a move that will see several other players react following a similar situation mid this year by Uber.
 
Uber triggered the first price following the entry into the market by Little Red in July.
Given that Little Cab was charging 5 shillings less than Uber at the time at Ksh.60, was the highest in the market. It slashed its prices down to Ksh.35 per Kilometer and the transit charges from Ksh.4 to Ksh.3 but still retained the base charge of 100.
Small players in the cab hailing app service had to react to with Taxify dropping its price per Kilometer in August by 10 shillings to Ksh.40 and the transit charges to Ksh.4 per minute down by one but like Uber it also retained the 100 base charge.
 
Another hailing service Mondo Ride followed suit in September dropping it price to Ksh.45 Ksh. 58, charging Ksh.4 per minute while retaining a base price of Ksh.100.
This left Safaricoms Little Cabs as the most expensive in the industry counting against it in the competition with Uber. With its new prices Little Cabs is considerably cheaper than any of its rivals.
Price wars can only go low to a certain level before everyone misses out on the profits. The companies will soon have to get innovative in order to retain and acquire new customers.
 
From discounts to loyalty points and long distance packages. In the near future the bigger players could end up acquiring small companies or rivals will merge to strengthen position in a fiercely competitive segment.
Currently Uber has 1,600 driveres and averages 10,000 trips a day. Little Cabs has about 1,000 drivers and averages 3, 500 trips a day.
 

Operations have resumed at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi, after the runway was temporarily closed yesterday evening following a crash landing incident.
 
However hundreds of passengers are still currently stranded at the JKIA, after an airplane from Somalia crash landed on the runway on Sunday evening.
As a result several local flights were delayed and some international flights have been cancelled.
 
In a tweet on its tweeter page, the national carrier announced that flight KQ 608 and 609 have been cancelled and guests will be re-accommodated on flight KQ 606/607, before concluding by apologizing for the inconvenience caused.
 
According to the Kenya airport authority officials, an aircraft from Somalia developed mechanical problems and made an emergency landing on its belly before veering off the runway.
 
Four people who were on board however escaped unhurt.
Also read :
Following the incident the runway was temporarily closed to evacuate the aircraft and some flights were diverted to Moi International Airport in Mombasa and Eldoret.
 
Passengers coming from various airports and those taking off from JKIA were stranded for up to eight hours as officials worked overtime to remove the plane from the scene and clear the runaway.
The runaway was finally cleared at midnight after many flights had been canceled.
The carrier  through  its twitter page said that passengers are currently being cleared slowly
 
The Kenya Airways via its tweeter page has requested passengers to keep on checking its websites for updates and new developments, since they do expect on Monday’s operations due to the closure.

As we all know, he’s a great advocator for the rights of people with disabilities and he didn’t just seat and make noise online, he actually started Malaika trust, an organization meant to celebrate the achievements of remarkable people who have overcome their disabilities and their quest to make a difference in the world.  This was way back in 2012.
Malaika trust is in turn responsible for Malaika tribute awards, awards started in 2012 to pay tribute to disabled Kenyans who are making a difference in society.
The awards are just around the corner, 3 December just to be specific and this year he intends to throw in a few spanners in the works. He will add in a different twist by first conducting a walk, dubbed Malaika disability walk from 7AM to 10 AM and he wants you to join him in championing this great course and basically give back to society. Entrance is totally free.
Also read:
And he has a narrative he’s advancing, that persons with disability are normal and they shouldn’t be awarded any special treatment. If it’s vying for political seats, they should be given equal opportunity to compete and woo the citizenry in a fair playground.
According to Daddy Owen, the whole idea of nominating them doesn’t add any value for them as they have no bargaining power to actually make a change and define policy.
The Tribute awards will go down at KICC from 6PM to 10 PM in an invites only red carpet event.
It will be part of Daddy Owen live, a 3 day event where the gospel sensation intends on preaching the gospel while at the same reconnecting with his fans that he has accumulated for over a decade. Don’t be surprised when he drops a song or two in the process.
 
 

The Jubilee administration wasted over Sh14 billion during the year 2014/2015.
This is according to a report released by the ‘s office that revealed massive wastage of money in government ministries and departments.
According to the Auditor General, a number of Ministries, Departments, Commissions and Funds incurred expenditure totalling Kshs. 14,435,690,489 of which value for money could not be established.
the report reads.
Much of the wastage occurred in the course of various procurement processes.
 
The report also revealed that a number of Ministries, Departments, Commissions and Funds failed to avail documents in support of various expenditure totaling 7,321,277,260.
the report says.
The report also revealed imprest balances amounting to Kshs.117,553,816 which ought to have been recovered or accounted for on or before 30 June 2015 but were still outstanding.
The report comes at a time when the government under President Uhuru Kenyatta is under sharp focus following a series of involving various ministries running into billions of shillings.
Key of which include the Ministry of Health scandal and the National Youth Scandal which are currently under probes by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission as well as various parliamentary select committees.

North Korea began three days of official mourning on Monday for late Cuban leader Fidel Castro, remembering him as a “close friend” and heroic ally in a joint struggle against US aggression.
Flags flew at half-mast at official buildings across the country as a mark of respect for the revolutionary icon, despite a relationship that was often warmer in rhetoric than reality.
In the Pyongyang subway, commuters in one station crowded around a glass case containing a Castro obituary published by the ruling party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun.
Alongside a picture framed with a black border and showing a head-and-shoulder shot of a bearded Castro in full military dress, the obit recalled his visit to North Korea in 1986 when he met founder-leader Kim Il-Sung.
It noted that the Cuban leader was awarded the title of “DPRK (North Korea) Hero” for his efforts to strengthen relations between two countries “fighting in the outposts of the anti-US, anti-imperialist struggle.”
Kim Hong-Chol, 76, a retired literary researcher in Pyongyang, said he clearly remembered Kim’s visit.
“He was a great revolutionary. Until the last minute he supported and defended our revolution, and fought intensely for anti-imperialist independence and against America,” Kim told AFP.
Asked about the historic restoration of Cuba-US diplomatic relations last year, Kim said Havana had acted “tactically for Cuba’s revolutionary benefit”.
Ordinary North Koreans usually express only officially-sanctioned views when questioned by foreign news organisations.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un sent a condolence message on Castro’s death, calling him a “close friend and comrade” of the Korean people.
An official delegation led by senior Kim aide and vice chairman of the ruling Workers’ Party Central Committee, Choe Ryong-Hae, left for Havana on Monday to attend memorial events.
Castro only made the one visit to the North. The fact that it came decades after the Cuban revolution and Kim’s ascent to power was partly a reflection of a geographical, cultural and often ideological divide that a shared hatred of the “US enemy” could never fully bridge.
Neither Kim Il-Sung nor his son and successor Kim Jong-Il — who had a profound fear of flying — ever made the trip to Havana.
During the 1970s they were rivals in the Non-Aligned Movement, with Castro favouring the Soviet Union while Kim Il-Sung kept an equal distance from Moscow and Beijing in a bid to play the communist giants off each other.
When Castro attended a NAM summit in Malaysia in 2003, he stopped off in China, Japan and Vietnam — but not North Korea.
But if personal chemistry was lacking, the two countries remained allies, with Cuba one of the few countries willing to flout the international sanctions imposed on the North over its nuclear weapons programme.
In 2013 Panama seized a North Korean ship carrying an undeclared Cuban arms shipment of Soviet-era weapons and fighter jets hidden under sacks of sugar.
North Korea insisted the weapons were being shipped for repair, prior to their return.

Sometimes in April 2014, Jamaican dancehall superstar, Konshens, jetted into the country for Guinness Evolution concert.
The “Bruk off yuh back” singer headed to Citizen TV for interview before hitting the stage at Kenya International Convention Center (KICC).
While at Citizen TV, Lillian Muli openly flirted with the Jamaican dancehall musician prompting KOT to go HAM on her.
 
Well, the incident with Konshens kinda repeated itself over the past weekend when Congolese singer, Awilo Longomba, met Lillian Muli.
The Lingala singer was in the country to headline the 15th edition of the Koroga Festival which went down at Arboretum Gardens on Sunday November 27.
Awilo had interviews at several media houses but his encounter with Lillian Muli raised eyebrows. The Citizen TV was up-close and too personal with the Congolese singer prompting critics to insinuate that she was flirting with him like she did with Konshens two years ago.
A photo of Lillian taking a selfie with Awilo Longomba was the genesis of the ‘weird thinking’ by Kenyans. She was very tight with the Lingala superstar.
 
Below are some of the comments that the photo elicited:
  Lillian the fisilet
: Lilian tena anataka kugeuza awilo Konshens
Muli loves flirting with international musicians
Oww! Wish I was Awilo getting caressed with Muli
Lilian Muli huwa tu kafililet
They would make a cute couple anyway
I can see Lilian is thirsting again
hehehe… don’t blame the player, blame da game
Lilian Muli si ajaribu anifisie aone moto!
One a fisilet always a fisilet
she did the same during Koshens interview
Wow! Lillian manjaa nzao
 
 

Israel’s air force targeted gunmen linked to the Islamic State group in Syria overnight, the army said Monday, after they fired on an Israeli soldier in the occupied Golan Heights.
“Overnight the (Israeli air force) targeted an abandoned UN building that has been used by the Islamic State as an operations centre along the border in the southern Syrian Golan Heights,” an army statement read.
It said the building was the “base for yesterday’s attack,” which was believed to be the first such direct assault by jihadists on Israeli soldiers in the Golan Heights since Syria’s civil war began in 2011.
The army said Israeli soldiers were targeted Sunday with machinegun fire and mortars and shot back. The air force then bombed the vehicle carrying the gunmen, identified as members of the Yarmouk Martyrs’ Brigade, a Syrian rebel group that pledged allegiance to IS.
Four of the militants were killed, with no Israeli soldiers injured.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the soldiers who “successfully repelled an attempted attack.”
“Our forces are prepared on our northern border, and we won’t let (IS) elements or other hostile elements use the cover of the war in Syria to establish themselves next to our borders,” he said in remarks relayed by his office.
Israel seized 1,200 square kilometres (460 square miles) of the Golan from Syria in the Six-Day War of 1967 and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community.
The two countries are still technically at war, though the border had remained largely quiet for decades until 2011.
Since then regular stray missiles have landed in Israeli border areas, but rebel groups and Syrian government forces have largely avoided directly targeting Israeli forces.
Israel attacks Syrian military targets when fire, even unintentional, spills over the demarcation line.

The British government could face a legal challenge over whether leaving the European Union automatically would trigger a departure from the single market, the BBC reported Monday.
The pro-EU think tank British Influence will tell Brexit Secretary David Davis that it will seek a judicial review to give parliament a vote on the country’s membership of the European Economic Area (EEA), taking the decision out of the government’s hands, according to the report.
All EU member states are in the EEA, which allows the tariff-free movement of goods, services, capital and labour.
The government believes that leaving the EU automatically means leaving the EEA, but British Influence argues that it must first invoke Article 127 of the EEA agreement, which requires the approval of MPs.
“There is a strong chance that the UK will be acting unlawfully by taking us out of the EEA with Brexit… so we are going to be petitioning for a judicial review” Jonathan Lis, deputy director of British Influence, told the BBC.
“Given Article 127 provides an express mechanism for withdrawal, it implicitly excludes other implied mechanisms for withdrawal such as ceasing to be a member of the EU,” added lawyer Jolyon Maugham.
Conservative MP and Brexit supporter Dominic Raab accused the lawyers of “coming up with new legal wheezes to try and frustrate the will of the people”.
“The public have spoken; we should respect the result and get on with it, not try to find new hurdles that undermine the democratic process.”
The government is already fighting another Brexit legal battle after the High Court ruled it must seek parliamentary approval before triggering Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, serving notice of its intention to leave the bloc.
Britain’s Supreme Court will hear the government appeal next week.

The couple exchanged their vows in a private wedding that was attended by close family and colleagues who also joined them for the reception at Ridgeways Garden.
 
Since their wedding that took place about 4 years ago, the couple has managed to keep their relationship off social media. In fact, you would be hard-pressed to find more than 6 photos of the beautiful couple. But Kambua recently bequeathed us with a rare photo of the cute couple in blue as they headed to church. “Kambua captioned the photo.
 
A photo that had fans swooning over just how cute the couple looked. Check out some of the comments:

Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNHCR) has launched an independent investigation into the alleged police brutality in Mumias, Kakamega County.
Two people have already succumbed to injuries inflicted by the police, while hundreds of residents are nursing serious injuries like broken limbs, while a few have even reported sexual assault under the hands of the law enforces.
51 year old Angelina Okoth succumbed to her injuries while undergoing treatment at St Mary Hospital in Mumias, while a day earlier a businessman was killed after his shop was set ablaze by policemen searching for the firearms.
Police are currently involved in a major manhunt operation for a criminal gang who raided Boker police station and stole G3 riffles and several rounds of ammunitions’ last weekend.
Also read :
 
Residents of mumias have decried the high handless of the police who are going round searching every homestead for the stolen ammo.
A host of leaders have strongly condemned the police brutality, Ford Kenya leader and Bungoma senator, moses wetangula has said the alleged police brutality is unwarranted and even wants the whole operation halted
 “Police have no right to use force on innocent Kenyans in the name of searching for stolen guns” he said as quoted by the Nation.
This comes on the background of the national police service announcing a cash reward of Ksh500, 000 for any information leading to the recovery of the stolen firearms and arrest of the gang.
 
Anyone with information can contact the nearest police station near you or get in touch with criminal investigation offices through toll free lines 999 112 911
The office of the inspector general has announced that it has received complaints of police brutality and as a result, the inspector general has ordered for expeditious institutions of investigation on complaints against excess force by the police.

At least 34 civilians were killed Sunday in a flare up of ethnic violence in restive eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, authorities said, following a week of soaring tensions.
“The provisional toll is 34 civilians killed,” said local official Joy Bokele, referring to an attack by a Nande ethnic militia on a displaced persons camp in the Hutu village of Luhanga.
“They started by attacking the FARDC (DR Congo military) position. While they were attacking the FARDC, another group was executing the population with bladed weapons or bullets,” Bokele said.
Bokele added that the attack was carried out by the Mai-Mai Mazembe, a Nande “self-defence” militia, and that one of the attackers was killed in the clashes.
Tensions between the Nande and Hutu peoples have been running high in the restive east, shaken by two decades of fighting over land, ethnic tensions and mineral riches.
The Nande accuse Congolese Hutus of abetting the FDLR Rwandan rebel group. The Hutus, in return, say they are looking for land where they can settle for farming and accuse the Nande of trying to expel them.
Sunday’s killings are the worst inter-communal violence in a year. Dozens of people have died since the start of the year in fighting between the Nande and the Hutus.
“If the army had not intervened, there would have been many more dead,” said a military source.
“The militia was searching for members of the Hutu community and wreaked carnage before burning down the village entirely,” said a local rights group, the Centre for the Promotion of Peace, Democracy and Human Rights (CEPADHO). “The attackers were there for more than an hour.”
The UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or MONUSCO, said a peacekeeping force in the area had heard gunshots and were “quickly deployed and neutralised the attack”, killing one of the attackers, adding that 15 people had been wounded and now evacuated.
CEPADHO called on the government and MONUSCO to take urgent action to prevent further ethnic violence.
“The Mai-Mai Mazembe made threats against the Hutus during the week, demanding that they leave the area or risk a purge,” CEPADHO added in a statement.
North Kivu has been the scene of repeated clashes for nearly two decades, and hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced.

Ex-NYS Deputy Director General Adan Harakhe and aspiring Mandera Governor who was also the Devolution ministry tender committee chairman Hassan Noor were on Monday morning arrested by Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) detectives.
The two were then driven to the Integrity Centre and there after whisked away to court over abuse of office charges.
Harakhe and Noor had initially appeared to be on the clear after they successfully fought off arrest by moving to court where they secured temporary orders barring police from arresting them.
 
However last week, the court ordered that Mr Harakhe and Mr Noor be arrested over a Sh47 million scandal.
Former Devolution Cabinet Secretary from any blame over the NYS scandal when she told the Parliamentary Accounts Committee last month that it was former NYS director general Githinji who was was the AIE holder during the time period the money was lost and not former Deputy Director General.
 
 she said.
Senior Principal Magistrate Felix Kombo issued the warrant of arrest against the two after they failed to show up court to answer charges of abuse of office and conspiracy to commit an economic crime.
The two were notified by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission about the charges but deliberately refused to go to court.
Former Devolution Principal Secretary Peter Mangiti is already facing charges in relation to the siphoning of Sh791 million from the National Youth Service. 

South Korean President Park Geun-Hye will not answer questions from prosecutors over a snowballing influence-peddling scandal rocking, her lawyer said Monday.
Prosecutors describe Park and her secret confidante, Choi Soon-Sil, as co-culprits in the scandal. They are accused of coercing top Seoul firms to donate over $60 million to non-profit foundations which Choi then used for personal gain.
Choi was charged last week with coercion and abuse of power.
The scandal has sparked nationwide fury, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets to call for Park’s ousting.
A parliamentary vote to impeach her could take place as early as this week as a growing number of ruling party politicians back the opposition-led campaign to oust the president.
Park earlier vowed to cooperate “sincerely” with the legal probe but has rejected a series of requests in recent weeks by prosecutors to make herself available for questioning.
“We regret that we can’t cooperate with the request from prosecutors to hold face-to-face questioning on November 29,” Yoo Young-Ha, Park’s lawyer, told reporters.
Seoul prosecutors gave Park an ultimatum last week, saying Tuesday is the final deadline for questioning before a powerful independent team of investigators takes over the probe in December.
But Park — the first South Korean president to become a criminal suspect while in office — is too busy handling state affairs and preparing a legal defence against the mounting accusations, Yoo said.
It is not clear whether Park will cooperate with the new independent investigative team.
As a sitting president, Park cannot be charged with a criminal offence except insurrection or treason, but she can be investigated and potentially charged once her term is over.
The president is also accused of letting Choi, daughter of a shady religious figure who was a longtime mentor to Park, meddle in state affairs including the nomination of top officials.

Steve Mbogo has the kind of flamboyance that can only be rivalled by Nairobi Senator Mike Sonko.
Just like the popular senator, Steve has a penchant for the finer thing in life like money, cars and luxurious jewellery. Once in a while, he likes to make it rain on people and he was certainly in usual form during the recently held Koroga Festival.
The Koroga Festival organised by Capital FM is a bi-monthly event that celebrates African music, food and culture and the 15th edition of the event saw Awilo Longomba jet into the country for a performance.
 
Dela and H_art the band took to the stage performing one of their hit songs. And Awilo Longomba proved that he could still keep up with the young ones through a riveting and spirited performance. A performance that jarred Steve Mbogo into showering him with wads of cash that added up to 500,000 Kshs.
Have a peep at the gallery below:
r
In a Tweet, Steve casually name-dropped by revealing  that he and the legendary Soukous musician go way back:
But as it turns put its not only Steve who has a strong relationship with this legend, Sauti Sol recently revealed that their club banger ‘Shake Yo Bum Bum was co-written by Awilo Longomba. How is that for a fun fact?
Also Read:

Ross Taylor shrugged off his eye problems to score a superb unbeaten century as New Zealand set Pakistan a formidable 369-run target to win the second Test on Monday.
Taylor finished 102 not out despite only being cleared to play two days before the Test after scarring on his left eye threatened his vision.
He was due to have surgery on Wednesday.
New Zealand declared late on the fourth day in Hamilton at 313 for 5 and Pakistan were one without loss after facing three overs before stumps.
Both sides vowed there would be no holding back on the final day with Pakistan needing to win to keep their world number two ranking and New Zealand looking to improve on seventh place.
“All going well that last session could be really entertaining,” said Taylor, who was pleased he made the decision to play.
“There were definitely thoughts going through my mind not to play so it was nice to draw on a bit of experience — I’ve been in that situation before — and put the team in a good place.
“Probably for the past year, for the first five to 10 balls of the innings I haven’t picked up the balls as I would have liked.”
Pakistan quick Mohammad Amir dismissed talk of playing for a draw.
“We like to be among the top teams in the world and we will try our best to retain that,” he said.
“We will definitely try to go for the target. The first session will be very important.”
The tourists will have to better the record fourth-innings succesful run chase at Seddon Park of 212 for 4 by Australia in 2000 to win on Tuesday’s final day and save the two-Test series.
The highest fourth-innings total on the ground is 344 for 6 by Sri Lanka in a drawn Test nearly 26 years ago.
New Zealand skipper Kane Williamson declared after a trademark cut to the boundary from Taylor took him to his century.
Earlier Tom Latham laid the foundations for the declaration with a battling 80 in a welcome return to form and Williamson made 42.
Pakistan made an early breakthrough when they dismissed Jeet Raval for two with the New Zealand score on 11, but they struggled to assert themselves despite the wicket continuing to show life.
Williamson and Latham fell in the middle session, and Henry Nicholls (26) and Colin de Grandhomme (32) went after the tea interval.
New Zealand, having won the first Test, need only a draw to beat Pakistan for the first time in 13 Test series dating back to 1985.
Taylor and Latham had both struggled for runs through recent South Africa and India tours as well as the first Test against Pakistan.
Taylor showed no sign of his vision problems when he opened his account with a four off Imran Khan, setting the tone for an innings that contained 16 boundaries.
He survived an lbw appeal on 16 in what was otherwise a chanceless knock.
Taylor said he had changed his technique to allow for his vision problems and it paid off.
“I wanted to get a bit more side on. I didn’t go out there to play the cut shot any more than I have in the past. It’s just surprising how I was a little more side-on that shot came naturally.”
Latham lived on the edge. He survived a runout appeal and had a moment of apprehension when the big screen mistakenly put up the word “out”.
On 41 he was dropped by Sami Aslam.
But his luck deserted him trying to fend off a Wahab Riaz bouncer and the ball looped off his gloves to Sarfraz Ahmed behind the stumps.
The wicketkeeper also snapped up Williamson who feathered a good-length Imran delivery to break a 96-run stand with Latham.

Tharaka-Nithi Governor Samuel Ragwa is now seeking police protection after receiving via text message.
Mr Ragwa said this during a fundraiser at Marimanti Catholic Church in Marimanti.
He has since recorded a statement with the police and asked them to investigate and arrest those behind the threats.
Mr Ragwa said.
The Governor further said his vehicle was blocked several times on Friday in Chuka town after a visit in the area by Deputy President William Ruto.
he said.
Gataya Mwenda, Mukothima MCA, said the matter should not be taken lightly and demanded a thorough investigation into the matter.
In September, Meru Governor Peter Munya was forced to go into hiding after receiving death threats following the temporary ban of by the Somali Government.
 
He was blamed for the ban and was later quoted on local media saying he was aware of khat business cartels “that include murderers who were plotting to end his life’.
He said.
Police sources in Meru said that the governor had repeatedly changed addresses since the khat ban has taken into effect for fear of attacks of drug cartels.

Francois Fillon, having clinched the presidential nomination for the right-wing Republicans party, will now join a far bigger battle for the future of France, the European Union and mainstream politics in the West.
After Donald Trump’s stunning victory in the United States, France’s election next April and May has become a test for how far a rising tide of nationalist and populist politics will rise.
If polls are to be believed, Fillon’s biggest rival is the far-right National Front (FN) leader Marine Le Pen who sees herself as part of a spreading revolt against globalisation and the political elite.
Fillon’s backers in the Republicans party believe his hard-right positions on protecting French culture, fighting Islamic extremism and combating crime will help to neuter Le Pen’s appeal.
“When you enter someone else’s house you do not take over,” Fillon said in a message to immigrants last week in a sign that he is not scared to adopt the nationalist language of his opponents.
His conservative social views and appeal to rural voters as a devout Catholic from provincial France might also shield him from charges of being an out-of-touch metropolitan liberal.
“It appears your imminent victory is worrying Marine Le Pen,” Bruno Le Maire, a rival-turned-supporter in the Republicans party, boomed at Fillon’s final campaign rally in Paris last Friday.
Le Maire, a former minister defeated by Fillon in the first round of the Republicans primary, declared Le Pen was right to be scared — to cheers from the mostly white, middle-class crowd.
-A symbol of the past? –
The stakes for France and Europe are high.
As well as pledging a crackdown on immigration, Le Pen has promised to pull her country out of the euro and organise a referendum on France’s membership of the European Union.
While Britain’s planned departure from the EU club was a major blow, the withdrawal of France, a founding member, could deliver the European project a coup de grace.
The FN under Le Pen has worked hard to try to shed the party’s historic racist image and hopes to capitalise on economic gloom and concern about Europe’s biggest migrant crisis since World War II.
In the northeastern Parisian suburb of Raincy, a group of FN activists buoyed by Trump’s victory and the Brexit vote gathered Sunday morning to hand out leaflets.
Local councillor Jordan Bardella rehearsed the attack lines on Fillon which are likely to be at the core of the party’s pitch.
Firstly, he argued that Fillon’s time as prime minister from 2007-2012 and various ministerial roles mean he is the sort of discredited establishment face that angry voters are keen to reject.
“He symbolises the past and I think French people want to turn the page,” the 21-year-old rising figure in the party told AFP in front of a fruit and vegetable market.
Secondly, his programme “is unprecedented in its violence. It’s a real attempt to smash the social system,” Bardella added.
Fillon has vowed to cut 500,000 public sector jobs, scrap the 35-hour working week, and introduce social security and healthcare cuts designed to reduce France’s chronic over-spending.
The 62-year-old, who grew up in a chateau near the town of Le Mans, has also expressed admiration for ex-British leader Margaret Thatcher, an advocate of globalisation, deregulation and free markets.
“Today the world is going totally in the opposite direction,” FN vice president Florian Philippot said last Thursday. “For me, Fillon is Thatcher but 30 years too late.”
Two new polls published on Sunday evening forecast that the Republicans party candidate will face — and beat — Le Pen in a second-round run-off vote in May.
This would be a re-run of the 2002 election when Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie made it into the second round against the rightwing candidate Jacques Chirac.
Voters on the centre-right and left united in a so-called “Republican front” to keep Le Pen out.
This pattern was repeated in regional elections in France last December when centrist voters came together to prevent the FN winning a single council despite a strong showing in the first round.
Fillon’s defeated rival Alain Juppe had argued that his programme of more gradual reform and less traditional views on abortion or gay rights would make him more palatable to leftist voters.
Jean-Yves Camus, an author and expert on the far-right in Europe, says that the election remains highly uncertain, with the Socialist party yet to nominate its candidate and the role of independents still unclear.
He says the attack on Fillon’s economic programme will be the FN’s most effective line, particularly among the sort of working class voters who helped propel Trump to the White House.
“At the end of the day, I still think the ‘Republican front’ will work,” he told AFP. “I don’t see French people making Marine Le Pen president of the Republic.”

KTN anchor-cum-reporter Joy Doreen Biira has been arrested by Ugandan forces while covering Kasese massacre.
Fighting erupted on Sunday November 28 when royal guards of the Rwenzururu kingdom tried preventing Uganda police and Uganda People Defense Force (UPDF) from raiding the king’s palace.
UPDF accused King Charles Wesley Mumbere of offering sanctuary to a separatist militia. Ugandan forces gave the king an ultimatum to release the militiamen before they finally stormed into his residence. 14 police officers and 41 rebels died in the clashes.
 
Joy Doreen Biira who is a Ugandan citizen and who also hails from Rwenzururu kingdom, was in Kasese covering the fight.
She described what she witnessed during the bloody chaos on her Instagram post before she was arrested by Uganda authorities.
Joy Doreen Biira wrote.
KTN Managing Editor, Joy Ageyo, confirmed Biira’s arrested saying she was apprehended by Ugandan soldiers for taking pictures of the chaos.
Joe Ageyo tweeted.
Biira’s former colleague at KTN and also Ugandan citizen, Nancy Kacungira, also expressed shock following her arrest.
Nancy Kacungira tweeted.
KTN and Biira’s workmates as well took to #FreeJoyDoreen to demand the release of the KTN reporter.
  We must stand up against dictatorship and journalists’ violation #FreeJoyDoreen #MorningExpressKTN
My colleague @JoyDoreenBiira arrested in Kasese by Uganda soldiers. We are demanding for her immediate release now. #FreeJoyDoreen @KTNNews
 
 

Government forces have retaken a third of rebel-held territory in Aleppo, forcing nearly 10,000 civilians to flee as they pressed their offensive to retake Syria’s second city.
In a major breakthrough in the push to retake the whole city, regime forces captured six rebel-held districts of eastern Aleppo over the weekend, including Masaken Hanano, the biggest of those in eastern Aleppo.
On Sunday, the 13th day of the operation, they also took control of the adjacent neighbourhoods of Jabal Badra and Baadeeen and captured three others, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Inzarat, Al-Sakan al-Shaabi and Ain al-Tall have all returned to regime hands and government forces have made large forays into Sakhur and nearby Haidariya, the monitor said.
It said government forces are “in control of most of the northern part” of Aleppo.
“The rebels have lost at least 30 percent of the territory they once controlled in Aleppo,” Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.
The regime gains came as its aircraft pounded rebel positions and amid heavy clashes between the opposition and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad in the strategic Sakhur district.
Masaken Hanano was the first district the rebels took in the summer of 2012 in a move that divided the city into a rebel-held east and a regime-controlled west.
Around 250,000 civilians besieged for months in the east have faced serious food and fuel shortages.
The Observatory said that nearly 10,000 civilians had fled east Aleppo overnight Saturday — at least 6,000 to the Kurdish-controlled northern district of Sheikh Maksoud, with the rest fleeing to government-held areas.
“It is the first exodus of this kind from east Aleppo since 2012,” Abdel Rahman said.
Syrian state television broadcast images of a crowd of civilians including women and children gathered around green buses that it said had come to pick them up in Masaken Hanano.
One woman was shown pushing a stroller and many others carried plastic bags on their heads as bombardment was heard in the distance.
Official media said they were taken “by the army to safe areas”.
Yasser al-Youssef, from the rebel group Nureddin al-Zinki, said opposition fighters were consolidating their positions in Sakhur.
“We are strengthening our positions to defend the city and residents, but the aircraft are destroying everything methodically, area by area,” he said of a regime campaign of air strikes.
Sakhur lies on a stretch of just 1.5 kilometres (less than a mile) between west Aleppo and Masaken Hanano, now both regime-controlled.
If the regime takes control of Sakhur, east Aleppo would be split in two from north to south, dealing a further blow to the armed opposition.
The latest regime push comes after days of intense bombardment on the east, which has been pounded with air strikes, shelling and barrel bombs.
On Saturday, dozens of families fled Sakhur and Haidariya as regime raids and artillery killed at least 18 civilians in several districts, the Britain-based Observatory said.
At least 225 civilians, including 27 children, have been killed since the government’s latest assault on east Aleppo began on November 15.
Rebel forces also intensified rocket attacks on western districts overnight, killing at least four civilians and wounding dozens, the Observatory said.
Such attacks have killed a total of 27 civilians since the offensive began, among them 11 children.
The United Nations has a plan to deliver aid to Aleppo and evacuate the sick and wounded, which rebel factions have approved but which Damascus has not yet agreed. Guarantees are also needed from regime ally Russia.
Once a commercial and industrial hub, Aleppo has seen some of the worst fighting in Syria’s nearly six-year war.
The conflict broke out in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests, and has since evolved into a complex war involving different factions and foreign powers.
On Sunday, the Turkish army said that 22 pro-Ankara Syrian rebels were hit by a chemical gas attack from Islamic State group jihadists in northern Syria.
The Turkish army is backing the Syrian fighters in an unprecedented cross-border operation it says is targeting both IS and the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia, which Ankara considers to be a “terrorist” group.
The YPG is a key component of a US-backed Arab-Kurdish alliance fighting to oust IS from its de facto Syria capital of Raqa, after the jihadist group overran large parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014.
Syria’s war has killed more than 300,000 people and displaced more than half the population.

A Japanese skating rink that froze 5,000 dead fish into the ice as an attraction for visitors has been forced to close after receiving a barrage of criticism.
Amusement park Space World is now melting the rink — which could take about a week — and will hold a memorial service for the fish, the company said.
The rink in southwestern Japan opened on November 12, after 5,000 fish were frozen under the surface of the ice as a decorative effect while customers skated above.
But the concept was slammed as unethical and the rink in the city of Kitakyushu was forced to close on Sunday, Space World spokesman Koji Shibata said.
“We received critical voices saying it is not good to use creatures as a toy, and that it is bad to let food go to waste,” he told AFP on Monday.
Social media erupted, with one visitor to the park’s Facebook page writing: “An event on an ice rink with frozen fish… How sinful.”
“This is not personal but a social issue. They made food into a toy where children go and play,” said another.
Shibata said the fish were all already dead at the time of purchase and were considered unfit to be sold in markets.
“Internally we’d had discussions over the morality of the idea” before the display was set up, he said.
Toshimi Takeda, general manager of Space World, said the intention was for customers to have fun while also learning about fish.
“We wanted customers to experience the feeling of skating on the sea, but after receiving criticism, we decided that we could not operate it any more”, he said.
“We are planning to hold a memorial service for the fish inviting a Shinto priest, which we’d planned before getting criticised.”

Philippine police defused a bomb found in a rubbish bin near the US embassy in Manila Monday, authorities said.
The police chief of the national capital region told AFP an improvised explosive device composed of a cellphone, blasting cap, 9-volt battery and 81-millimetre mortar was found by a street sweeper about 200 meters from the embassy.
“Most probably there was an intention to bomb the area because there’s a detonating device, a cellphone, but this is still under investigation,” chief superintendent Oscar Albayalde said in a phone interview.
Police sent a team to “disintegrate” the device shortly after it was reported to authorities, Albayalde added.
Albayalde said police still had no suspect and were interviewing witnesses while seeking to obtain CCTV footage of the area.

At one end of a backstreet in downtown Delhi a group of women hold a vigil to demand rapists be executed, while at the other acolytes of a spiritual leader arrested for sexual assault demand his release.
Anyone seeking a glimpse of the bewildering range of issues animating voters in the world’s largest democracy should stroll past parliament and head a few hundreds yards north to Jantar Mantar.
Here on any given day, everyone from retired generals to landless widows can be seen holding forth in a tree-lined avenue tucked behind some of the city’s swankiest hotels and most famous landmarks.
Some protests attract crowds in their thousands while other causes are championed by lone campaigners who hand out leaflets to curious passersby.
A stone’s throw from India’s corridors of power and fenced off with barricades, Jantar Mantar carries echoes of Speaker’s Corner in London or the Occupy movement’s takeover of McPherson Square in Washington.
But as the smell of freshly-cooked dosas and other street food wafts down the road, mingling with the smoke of hand-rolled bidi cigarettes — it has a uniquely Indian aroma.
The mishmash of malcontents includes some who turn up day after day for years and others who camp out overnight to air their grievances.
A veteran demanding reforms to army pensions poisoned himself to death in early November and in 2015, a farmer hanged himself from a tree in front of horrified onlookers.
Santosh Singh has been protesting here for four years to persuade authorities to return land that he says was effectively stolen by his own family by declaring him dead.
Singh says his family destroyed all his records and then told the authorities he had died because they wanted his land for themselves.
“The media is witness to the fact that I’m alive,” Singh told AFP when asked what motivated him day after day.
Anjit Kumar, an official in the Aam Aadmi anti-corruption party who is a regular visitor in support of a string of causes, says Jantar Mantar is a good place to catch the eye of journalists milling around parliament.
“You can show your strength there,” he said.
Civil protests have a rich history in India, with Mahatma Gandhi’s campaigns of non-violence, such as the 1930 Salt March, playing a vital part in shaping opposition to British colonial rule.
In the early 1990s, protestors in Delhi used to be able to march up and down Rajpath, the thoroughfare which sweeps past the presidential palace and major government ministries that were built by the British.
But authorities then began imposing restrictions, eventually designating Jantar Mantar as one of the few places where protestors could gather.
Local historian Sohail Hashmi said it was shameful politicians had shunted their critics into a sidestreet.
“Those mass mobilisations on Rajpath were an opportunity for the people to communicate their anger directly to the government. Now it’s no longer possible to do anything more than have a symbolic protest,” said Hashmi.
“How can a government, an elected government, refuse to meet people who have brought them to power?”
While ministers and lawmakers rarely deign to visit, the ranks of outside broadcast vans attest to the media’s appetite for the protestors’ stories.
When Donald Trump won the US presidency, cameramen were on hand to capture a group of ultra-nationalist Hindus celebrate by banging drums.
Some campaigners are less interested in publicity but rather want to demonstrate commitment to a cause, whatever the personal sacrifice.
One group of women has been campaigning for nearly four years to demand the death penalty for anyone convicted of rape, including minors, since a deadly gang-rape on a bus in Delhi in December 2012.
Some initially quit their jobs but “life became very difficult to manage and they had to go back to work,” said one of the protestors who comes in the evenings after a day in the office.
Further down the line is an equally passionate group whose demand is for the release of Asaram Bapu, a self-proclaimed Hindu godman or guru, who has been in custody since 2013 on charges of sexual assaulting a 16-year-old girl.
Several hundred of the 75-year-old Bapu’s supporters clashed with police in May — one of the rare occasions when Jantar Mantar’s general culture of lively but peaceful protest degenerated into violence.

Israeli Arab rapper Tamer Nafar’s politically-charged lyrics have sparked the same kind of controversy that may have made his hero Tupac Shakur proud.
Nafar, from the pioneering political rap group DAM, has touched a nerve with songs like “Who’s the Terrorist?” skewering what he and others say is discrimination against Arabs in Israel.
He has become a star among Israel’s Arab population and Palestinians, but Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev, a former military censor with a combative style, is not a fan.
She has singled him out for criticism, accused him of incitement and sought to have one of his recent performances cancelled, helping make him a target of rightwing protesters.
Speaking to AFP in a recent interview, the 37-year-old, who wears a hoody, baggy pants and simple gold chain, dismissed her remarks, saying: “Regev is nothing but a government mouthpiece spreading racist poison.”
Speaking after a concert in the Arab-Israeli city of Sakhnin attended by about 1,000 people, many of them teenagers, he pledged to continue with his strident lyrics matched with infective beats.
Regev accuses Nafar of taking it too far, reportedly saying he “chooses at every opportunity and before every possible audience to come out against the idea of the state of Israel and its existence as the state of the Jewish people.”
She charges that some of his lyrics justify “terrorism.”
– ‘Country of my ancestors’ ?
Arab Israelis like Nafar are descendants of Palestinians who remained after Israel was created in 1948, and they currently make up around 18 percent of the country’s population.
They tend to sympathise with the Palestinian cause and Nafar refers to himself as Palestinian.
Growing up in the 1990s in Lod, a mixed Israeli city southeast of Tel Aviv, Nafar listened to Tupac, the provocative American hip-hop star murdered in 1996.
Nafar said he saw similarities between the African-American struggle for equality and the Israeli-Arab experience.
“The imagery in Shakur’s videos was similar to our reality in Lod — how the police were chasing them in the streets,” he said.
“I found out we had something in common. I didn’t speak English and I used to search for the lyrics in English, print them and sit in school with a dictionary translating them.”
DAM — an acronym for Da Arabian MCs but which also means “blood” in Hebrew and “lasting” in Arabic — performs songs that are explicitly political.
In his song “Who’s the Terrorist?” Nafar says: “they call me a terrorist but I live in the country of my ancestors.”
In another, he rails against so-called honour killings in Arab communities.
Israeli media said Regev, whose spokesman did not respond to a request for comment, took particular objection to lyrics saying:
“Democracy? Why? It reminds me of the Nazis. You’ve raped the Arab soul, and it became pregnant, giving birth to a child called ‘terror attack’. And then you call us terrorists.”
The controversy peaked last month when Nafar was to perform at a government-funded festival in the northern Israeli port city of Haifa.
Regev called on Haifa’s mayor to withdraw his invitation. Despite the pressure, the gig went ahead, although the atmosphere was charged with rightwing activists wrapped in Israeli flags blocked by police from approaching the stage.
Nafar said he was “scared” by dozens of protesters outside.
“They were yelling ‘terrorist’, ‘go to Gaza’ and ‘son of a bitch.'”
“It is not normal to go to a concert surrounded by 15 security guards for my own protection,” he added.
“There is Tamer the artist who gets on stage and raps, challenging rightwingers and fascists, but there is also Tamer the father and husband who loves his wife and children and worries about himself and them, and takes fascist threats seriously.”
He says he has Arab and Jewish friends who helped him through the concert.
A spokeswoman for the Haifa municipality said the event reflected the city’s diverse culture.
Nafar is not the only artist or entertainer to be targeted by Israel’s culture minister in recent months.
Regev, who belongs to what is seen as Israel’s most rightwing government ever, has taken on Israel’s largely leftwing Jewish cultural elite.
They have accused her of seeking to muzzle them, including by promoting a bill to cut subsidies to cultural institutions deemed not “loyal” to the state.
She was booed on arrival at a recent cultural conference, and hit back from the podium.
“As the famous Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu once said: ‘Cut the bullshit,'” she said.
In September, she walked out of a film award ceremony as Nafar and a Jewish performer read out a poem by Mahmoud Darwish, considered the Palestinian national poet.
“Everything I have done came from the reality in the streets of Lod, from that ghetto,” Nafar said of the part of the city where he grew up.
“My job is to document my generation and I am not ashamed of using some Hebrew words in my songs.”
He recently finished a film, “Junction 48,” which he co-wrote and starred in under direction by Israeli-American Udi Aloni.
It tells the story of an Arab-Israeli rapper, his lover and their feelings of desolation inside Israel.
The film was to have been shown earlier this month at a youth club in the northern city of Karmiel, but the screening was cancelled by the local municipality.

The Brexit vote has shaken the City of London but will not destroy it despite creating uncertainty, the newly-installed Lord Mayor of the financial hub told AFP.
Speaking at his offices opposite the Bank of England, Andrew Parmley spoke of his concerns about attracting high-skilled workers and how City firms will be able to do business in the European Union after Britain leaves.
“Storms come around but we weather them every time,” 60-year-old Parmley, the City’s 689th Lord Mayor in eight centuries, said in an interview at his official residence Mansion House.
The Lord Mayors rule over the Square Mile, an area with 8,000 residents which every day hosts some 450,000 employees, mainly in the financial services sector.
Parmley officially took up the post on November 11 in an environment that he said presented “some challenges”, following Britain’s vote on June 23 to leave the EU.
The referendum result was a shock for the City, raising fears that it could lose its top-flight global status alongside New York.
The main concern for the City is the loss of passporting rights, a money-saving mechanism that allows financial products approved by a single regulator in a member state to be sold in the entire European Union.
Losing this advantage could push some companies to move at least some of their activities to continental Europe in order to be able to continue to do business.
“Some businesses have undoubtedly made plans to relocate,” Parmley said, although he added there have been no major announcements as “most people are still waiting”.
Five months after the referendum, the government has not given any detail on its plan for future ties between Britain and the EU, except to say it wants British firms to have maximum access to the EU’s single market.
Prime Minister Theresa May has promised to invoke Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty — the formal procedure for leaving — by the end of March.
Until then, patience will be of the essence.
“We’d like things to accelerate a little bit, we’d like greater clarity, greater certainty as to what the government is offering us,” Parmley said.
City officials are working with the government “to test the water, to see the direction of travel”, defending the interests of the 17,000 companies that operate in the City and Britain’s other main financial centres.
But Parmley admits it is “very unlikely” that passporting could be retained in its current form.
He hopes the government “can give us something that looks like passporting or we can find a way to ease business with our colleagues in Europe”.
Another concern is about being able to attract the international mix of employees working for City firms.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has talked about the possibility of special visas for the British capital, while Parmley said only that there had been talk of “a range of regional visas”.
He said the City’s other “big concern” was over euro clearing — an intermediary role between buyer and seller of financial products denominated in euros.
The business is estimated to account for 83,000 jobs in Britain, according to the Financial Times.
Cities like Frankfurt, Paris or Amsterdam have been outlining ambitions to take market share from London.
But Parmley said they could not compete in terms of infrastructure and London’s draw as a place to live.
He was installed in a grandiose ceremony that brings crowds of tourists to the City every year, and he believes the City’s traditions will prove resilient in adversity.
And the outlook is not all downbeat. One scenario after Brexit, he said, was for the City to orient itself more at emerging markets “that we may have neglected”.

Two men were charged Monday with stealing rare pygmy marmosets from an Australian wildlife park as a baby was reunited with her mum and the hunt continued to find dad.
Three of the monkeys, the world’s smallest, were snatched from their enclosure at the Symbio Wildlife Park south of Sydney on Saturday, with police and zookeepers launching a desperate bid to locate the suckling infant.
There were fears it would die if away from its mother for more than 24 hours while keepers also worried its twin would perish because their mother was too stressed to feed.
After a tip-off from the public, two men, aged 23 and 26, were arrested and charged Monday with dealing with the proceeds of crime.
Police found the unnamed four-week-old infant in the men’s car and a 10-month-old female, Sophia, at another address. But the father, Gomez, remains missing.
It was not clear why the monkeys, which are native to South America and usually about 20 centimetres (eight inches) tall, were taken, but Symbio park manager Matthew Radnidge said there would have been a financial motivation.
“But in terms of value, an animal has a value of whatever someone perceives, so within the zoo and wildlife park industry, no money ever changes hands with these animal transfers,” he told ABC radio.
Sydney’s Daily Telegraph said marmosets, also known as thumb monkeys, were in demand on the black market as pets, commanding prices of up to Aus$5,000 (US$3,700).
The wildlife park said the hungry and scared baby had been reunited with its mother and sister.
“Mum cradled the baby straight into her arms and bub immediately began to feed,” the park said on its Facebook page.
“Early observations this morning are promising, with two bright eyed twins observed on mum’s back — so a great result.”

President-elect Donald Trump made unsubstantiated claims of serious US voter fraud and said “millions of people” had cast their ballots illegally, offering no evidence for the assertions he put forth on Twitter.
Trump’s shock path to the White House saw him fall short of his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the popular vote — she carried the election by 2.2 million ballots — but win the all-important Electoral College count, which decides the US presidency.
The Republican billionaire’s latest statements, in which he said he would have won the popular vote were it not for the “millions of people who voted illegally,” came as steps are being taken towards recounting votes in the state of Wisconsin, which Trump won.
Trump and his aides have pushed back hard against that recount, with the president-elect letting loose a series of early-morning tweets in which he quoted Clinton about the need to respect the electoral process.
But by the end of the day, Trump was alleging on Twitter that: “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”
Although Trump had warned before the election that the result might be “rigged,” he had offered no such complaint after his unexpected November 8 victory — until now.
Back in New York late Sunday after spending the Thanksgiving holiday at his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort with his family, Trump again took to Twitter, alleging that voter fraud had occurred in several states.
“Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California – so why isn’t the media reporting on this? Serious bias – big problem!” Trump posted.
Trump and his aides have offered no evidence concerning the claims, nor did Trump explain why he would oppose the nascent Wisconsin recount if illegal voting was such a serious problem.
No election observers have pointed to any such widespread fraud.
While the recount was requested by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who received a minute fraction of the total vote in Wisconsin, Clinton’s campaign has said it would join the process despite having seen no irregularities in the White House contest so far.
Trump’s top aide Kellyanne Conway, in the middle of the turbulence, appeared Sunday to at least hint that if the Clinton team pushes too hard on the Wisconsin recount, the president-elect might rethink his vow not to seek Clinton’s prosecution for using a private email server when she was secretary of state.
Conway said on ABC that while Trump was being “magnanimous” toward Clinton, “I guess her attitude towards that is to have her counsel go and join this ridiculous recount.”
Marc Erik Elias, an election lawyer for the Democratic candidate, said in a post on Medium.com on Saturday that the campaign would also participate in recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania if they are arranged.
Most election experts see almost no chance the election outcome could be reversed — Clinton trails in each state by several thousand votes.
Trump won Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by a total of just over 100,000 votes, even while compiling many more than the 270 votes needed for victory in the Electoral College.
The dispute continued to roil what has already been a rough transition period, as serious signs of internal discord over cabinet picks again emerged on Sunday.
The discord centers around the position of secretary of state, with some in the Trump camp supporting Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, as a more mainstream choice while others favor the more divisive former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.
In what political analysts considered a highly unusual public airing of those tensions from within the Trump team, Conway last week tweeted that she had received “a deluge” of concern from people warning against Romney.
Asked about that on Sunday, she told NBC that she was not “campaigning” against Romney, but was “just astonished at the breathtaking volume and intensity of blowback” to a possible Romney nomination.
Trump supporters were infuriated in March when the former Massachusetts governor delivered a passionately worded attack on Trump on the part of the Republican Party’s establishment, calling him a “fraud,” given to “absurd third-grade theatrics.”

President Bashar al-Assad is determined to retake Syria’s second city Aleppo to deal a decisive blow to the rebels ahead of a possible change in US foreign policy, analysts say.
Assad’s regime has in recent months been pressing a series of offensives to seize control of the devastated city’s east, which has been in rebel hands since 2012.
The latest assault made a major breakthrough on Saturday when government forces seized the largest of the city’s opposition-controlled neighbourhoods.
For Assad’s regime, taking Aleppo would be “one of its greatest victories”, Middle East expert Mathieu Guidere says, stressing the city’s “extraordinary historical, political and geopolitical prestige”.
“It was one of the first cities to be taken by the armed opposition,” he adds.
Syria’s former economic capital and industrial hub lies at a strategic commercial crossroads near the border with Turkey.
The city has been roughly divided since 2012 into a rebel-held east and a government-controlled west.
Fabrice Balanche, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says the regime retaking east “Aleppo would be a turning point” as it would then control “the five largest cities in Syria”.
Assad’s forces already control the capital Damascus, the central cities of Homs and Hama and the coastal city of Latakia.
Bringing Aleppo under their control would also give regime forces a better chance at taking back the northwestern province of Idlib, which is almost entirely held by rebels and jihadists.
Bassam Abu Abdallah, an analyst close to the Damascus regime, says east Aleppo’s fall would “tip the balance of power in the conflict”.
Regime forces have since July 17 besieged east Aleppo, where some 250,000 civilians face severe food and fuel shortages and nearly all hospitals have been damaged by bombardment.
“The aim is to push these (rebel) groups towards a scenario like in Homs,” Abu Abdallah says, referring to Syria’s third city where rebels were defeated in 2014 after two years of regime siege and bombardment.
The current offensive will either lead to a truce or to rebels being evacuated towards other opposition-held areas in Syria, he says.
The latest regime push comes after days of intense bombardment of the east, which has been pounded with air strikes, shells and barrel bombs.
Analysts say the relentless bombing also aims to push war-battered, hungry residents to turn against the armed opposition.
More than 4,000 civilians fled rebel-held districts into regime-held areas this weekend in the first exodus of the kind in east Aleppo since 2012.
Assad’s regime “can only take back a territory if its population no longer backs the rebels”, Balanche says.
The government regaining control of Aleppo would mark the end of fighting on a major battlefront in a war that has killed 300,000 people since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.
Rebels would then control pockets of territory only in the southern province of Daraa, the birthplace of the uprising, and near Damascus where they have lost their previous bastions of Daraya and Moadamiyeh al-Sham.
A defeat in Aleppo would mean rebel groups “are no longer able to maintain the population under their control or protect them”, Guidere says.
Balanche says the insurgents losing Aleppo would show the “opposition is incapable of a major military success” and dash its hopes of presenting itself as a viable alternative to the Damascus regime.
Aleppo’s fate will be key in any resumption of stalled peace talks to end the five-and-a-half-year war after three failed attempts at UN-brokered dialogue this year.
Guidere says the regime would have the upper hand and “tend to want to negotiate even less” if it seized east Aleppo.
US president-elect Donald Trump taking up office in less than two months’ time and a possible subsequent change in American foreign policy could also give Assad the advantage.
If Damascus controls both the capital and Aleppo in January when Trump arrives in the White House, “he may say replacing the regime is categorically out of the question”, Guidere says.
Balanche agrees: “We know Trump doesn’t really want to invest himself in Syria. If Aleppo falls… it will no longer be worth supporting the opposition.”

Opposition leader Raila Odinga has told Ugandan to stop harassing Kenyan fishermen in the waters of Lake Victoria.
Raila stated that Kenyan fishermen belong to the East African community trading block and the fish in Lake Victoria have no boundaries as they cannot tell which waters they belong to.
Raila said during a boat racing competition at Siungu beach in Bondo constituency.
He challenged President Museveni’s to uphold the spirit of East African integration and ensure peaceful coexistence between Kenyans and Ugandans.
he said.
 
Raila said good working relations between neighbouring countries will boost the economy and improve foreign exchange.
He also took issue with the customs departments, both on the Kenyan and the Ugandan sides, for allegedly imposing hefty penalties and fines on those who are accused of encroaching into the other’s territory.
In March this year, Raila threatened to marshal the opposition to reclaim the disputed Migingo Island if the government does not take action.
He said that since President Uhuru Kenyatta has demonstrated failure to repossess the island from Uganda, the opposition will make sure Kenya takes over the Island in Lake Victoria.
Earlier this year, Ugandan security officers stopped a voter registration exercise saying IEBC officials went to the Island without their knowledge, and while aware the ownership of the island is still in dispute.
Two Independent Electoral and Boundary Commission clerks were arrested and their equipment confiscated as they registered Kenyans.

Elgeyo Marakwet Senator Kipchumba Murkomen has sensationally claimed powerful ODM MPs close to party leader Raila Odinga received part of the NYS scandal money.
Murkomen said companies linked to Suna East MP Junet Mohamed, a fierce defender of Raila, were paid over Sh100 million in contracts by the Devolution Ministry which was then headed by Waiguru.
He said the MPs are among powerful politicians working round the clock to ensure former Devolution Cabinet Secretary Ann Waiguru is not prosecuted over the NYS scandal.
Junet and Suba MP John Mbadi, he alleged are among high-profile politicians protecting Waiguru from facing the law over the scam in which the taxpayer lost over Sh1 billion.
 
he said in Iten on Saturday as quoted by the Star.
He said the two should be investigated.
Murkomen and Deputy President William Ruto’s aide, Farouk Kibet, are said to have received Sh15 million.
Earlier this month Deputy President were involved in a bitter exchange of words over the National Youth Service (NYS) scandal.
Ruto told Waiguru to take responsibility for the scandal as she was the one in charge of the NYS project when the millions of shillings were stolen.
The DP was categorical saying that it was Waiguru who presided over the scandal and warned that the government would ensure the culprits are prosecuted.
 
Waiguru appeared before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) where she named Ruto’s aide Farouk Kibet and Senator Murkomen as part of those who benefited from the NYS millions.
However, Murkomen now accuses the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee of failing to live up to its expectations.
he said.
Meanwhile, Mbadi has maintained that Murkomen and Kibet appear before PAC to provide information on their links to the scandal.

Deputy President William Ruto has moved to allay fears over the election date for the 2017 general elections.
Speaking to congregation in Nakuru County, Ruto reiterated that the , according to the constitution.
In an apparent swipe at the opposition Cord coalition, Ruto told off leaders propagating rumours that the elections will be pushed ahead saying that they are panicking since they have not yet put their houses in order.
The Cord principals Raila Odinga, Kalonzo Musyoka and Moses Wetang’ula are all gunning to be chosen as the opposition flag bearer to face it off the Jubilee Party led by President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy Ruto.
He said those alleging a ploy to hold them past that date are simply not ready and looking to cast aspersions elsewhere.
 
Ruto said.
the deputy president said.
Amani National Congress Party leader Musalia Mudavadi was quoted in some sections of the media on Saturday alleging a plot by the government to tamper will the election timelines.
Mudavadi pointed at the decision by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Selection panel to cancel interviews for the position of chairperson and call for fresh applications, terming the action as a government plan to change the elections date.
The deputy president said that the government has made all the necessary arrangements to ensure the polls will proceed as normal.

Nightclubs closed, baseball games were suspended and booze was banned Sunday as Cuba prepared to send off revolutionary leader Fidel Castro with days of tributes and a cross-country funeral procession.
Cubans braced for a series of events to commemorate the life of the man who ruled the communist island for decades, played a major role in the Cold War and was loved or loathed by many.
Students left candles burning next to a portrait of the black-bearded communist firebrand during a vigil at Havana University.
A giant photo of Castro was hung outside the National Library on Revolution Square, where throngs of people are expected to pay their last respects Monday and Tuesday, kicking off a series of memorials.
The portrait shows a young Fidel carrying a backpack and rifle during the Cuban Revolution, which brought him to power in 1959.
A titan of the 20th century who beat the odds to endure into the 21st, Castro died late Friday after surviving 11 US administrations and hundreds of assassination attempts. No cause of death was given.
“It is a great loss. The most important thing is that he died when he chose, not when all the counter-revolutionaries wanted,” said Carlos Manuel Obregon Rodriguez, a 43-year-old taxi driver in Havana.
“It may not be painful for everyone, but it is for a lot of people. I was born under this revolution and I owe Fidel a lot,” he added.
President Raul Castro said his older brother’s remains would be cremated. There was no official confirmation of whether that had yet happened.
Dissidents who endured Fidel’s iron-fisted rule kept a low profile. The Ladies in White opposition group cancelled a regular Sunday protest in what they said was a show of respect for those mourning Castro.
“We are not happy about the death of a man, a human being. We are happy about the death of dictators,” Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White, told AFP.
Castro’s ashes will go on a four-day island-wide procession starting Wednesday before being buried in the southeastern city of Santiago de Cuba on December 4.
Santiago, Cuba’s second city, was the scene of Castro’s ill-fated first attempt at revolution in 1953 — six years before he succeeded in ousting the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Castro ruled until handing power to Raul Castro in 2006 due to poor health.
Ordinary Cubans hailed him for providing free health care and education. But he cracked down harshly on dissent, jailing and exiling opponents.
The news of Castro’s death drew strong — and polarized — reactions across the world.
In Miami, just 370 kilometers (230 miles) away, crowds of celebrating Cuban-Americans danced in the streets.
Amid the din of car horns, drums and singing in the Little Havana neighborhood, a chant rang out: “Fidel, you tyrant, take your brother, too!”
Some two million Cubans live in the United States, nearly 70 percent of them in Florida, where so many islanders have fled to since the 1959 revolution.
Cuban-American politicians excoriated Castro, with Florida Senator Marco Rubio calling him an “evil, murderous dictator who inflicted misery and suffering on his own people.”
However, Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed Castro as “the symbol of an era,” and China’s Xi Jinping said “Comrade Castro will live forever.”
There were sharply different US reactions from outgoing President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump.
Obama, who embarked on a historic rapprochement with Cuba in 2014, said the US extended a “hand of friendship” to the Cuban people.
But Trump dismissed Castro as “a brutal dictator.”
The future of the US-Cuban thaw is uncertain under Trump, who has threatened to reverse course if Havana does not allow greater respect for human rights.
Havana was unusually quiet after alcohol sales were restricted and shows and baseball matches suspended.
Fidel Castro, who came to power as a bearded, cigar-chomping 32-year-old, adopted the slogan “socialism or death” and kept his faith to the end.
He survived more than 600 assassination attempts, according to aides, as well as the failed 1961 US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion.
His outrage over that botched plot contributed to the Cuban missile crisis the following year, when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war.
The USSR bankrolled Castro’s regime until 1989, when the Soviet bloc’s collapse sent Cuba’s economy into free-fall.
But Fidel managed to hang on, ceding power to his brother in July 2006 to recover from intestinal surgery.
Raul Castro has begun very gradually to liberalize the economy and strengthen ties with former foreign foes.
Analysts said the elder brother’s presence still weighed on his brother’s rule.
Fidel Castro’s death “will probably speed up the economic reforms,” said Jorge Duany, a Cuba specialist at Florida International University.

Liverpool’s Divock Origi says his team-mates must step up in the absence of Philippe Coutinho as they prepare to face Leeds United in the League Cup quarter-finals on Tuesday.
The influential Coutinho sustained suspected ankle ligament damage during Liverpool’s 2-0 win over Sunderland on Saturday and could now be out until next year.
After replacing Coutinho, Origi scored Liverpool’s opener and the Belgium striker believes there is sufficient quality in the squad to compensate for the unavailability of their Brazilian talisman.
“It’s unfortunate with Philippe because everyone knows how good a person he is and I think he was in top form, so I hope it’s not too bad,” Origi told the Liverpool website.
“But I’m sure he will come back stronger and I always said that we have a strong group. Everybody has to help each other.
“I’m always ready. I believe I can help the team a lot this year and I believe I have the qualities to start in this team.”
With Adam Lallana and Daniel Sturridge doubtful and Roberto Firmino unlikely to be risked after taking a kick to his calf against Sunderland, Origi seems certain to start against Leeds.
Sturridge scored twice as Liverpool, who lost to Manchester City in last season’s final, overcame Tottenham Hotspur 2-1 in the fourth round.
Leeds, fifth in the second-tier Championship, overcame Norwich City on penalties and are the lowest-ranked team left in the competition.
There could be an upset on the cards in Tuesday’s other fixture, where Premier League strugglers Hull City entertain Rafael Benitez’s Newcastle United, who are flying high at the Championship summit.
Newcastle saw an eight-game winning streak ended by a 1-0 loss at home to Blackburn Rovers after Benitez made a raft of changes and he called on his team to raise their game for the trip to the KCOM Stadium.
“I think we have to take the positives. We were so good for so many games and that has to be the way to go forward,” said the Spaniard.
“We have to analyse quickly what we did wrong and be ready for the next game in three days. That is a positive thing.”
Manchester United will hope to shake themselves out of their domestic torpor on Wednesday when West Ham United return to Old Trafford just three days after the sides’ 1-1 Premier League draw there.
United have drawn their last four home league games and have scored just four goals in their last five domestic fixtures on their own patch.
Speaking after the draw with West Ham, in which United manager Jose Mourinho was again sent to the stands, midfielder Ander Herrera expressed disbelief at the team’s current woes.
“We’re playing the right way and doing things the right way,” said the newly capped Spain international, whose side beat holders City 1-0 in round four, in a Sky Sports interview.
“I think West Ham are a good side and they didn’t get the ball for more than one minute (at a time), so it’s unbelievable that we aren’t winning these games.
“It’s the first time in my career that I’ve felt something like this.”
United will be without midfielders Paul Pogba and Marouane Fellaini through suspension.
Having started on the bench against West Ham on Sunday, Wayne Rooney will hope to return to the starting XI as he chases a record-equalling 249th United goal.
Arsenal will have more of a spring in their step ahead of their home game with Southampton, having ended a run of three successive draws by beating Bournemouth 3-1 on Sunday.
But Southampton were also bolstered by a positive weekend result, having consigned former manager Ronald Koeman to a 1-0 defeat on his return to St Mary’s with Everton.
Fixtures (1945 GMT unless otherwise stated)
Tuesday:
Hull v Newcastle, Liverpool v Leeds
Wednesday:
Arsenal v Southampton, Man United v West Ham (2000 GMT)

Barcelona boss Luis Enrique lamented what he described as the worst display of his time in charge as the Catalan giants escaped with a 1-1 draw at Real Sociedad on Sunday.
Barca have now failed to win in their last eight visits to San Sebastian, but for once the slip-up felt like a victory as Sociedad dominated from start to finish.
“The draw is positive because we take a point from a match in which it was practically impossible to take a point,” Enrique told BeIN Sports Spain
“Real Sociedad were infinitely better than us with and without the ball. They won all the battles.
“It is almost a miracle that we took a point.”
Barca avoided defeat at Anoeta for the first time in five seasons, but fall six points adrift of La Liga leaders Real Madrid ahead of their meeting in El Clasico next weekend.
“As almost always happens here Real got the better of us and if someone was watching the game without seeing the colour of the shirts they would think the other team was Barca,” added Enrique.
Barca failed to muster a shot on target in the first-half and didn’t even make it into the Sociedad area until the 41st minute.
However, it took 53 minutes for Sociedad to go ahead when a hobbling Gerard Pique, playing with a heavily strapped ankle, failed to clear Willian Jose’s weak header off the line.
Yet, just six minutes later, in Barca’s only move of real quality in the 90 minutes, Neymar sprinted clear on the left and his cross was buried into the bottom corner by Lionel Messi.
“Playing like this it will be very difficult to win the league,” said Pique.
However, Enrique insisted Barca’s league challenge is far from over with just 13 games played and two meetings with Madrid to come.
“That performance has happened I think once in my time at Barca,” added the man who has steered Barca to back-to-back La Liga titles.
“It is the first time I have the seen the team clearly inferior to the opponents.
“The positive thing is we will fight for this league until the end and we have to improve on this display without doubt because it is impossible to play worse.”
Barca should at least be able to count on Pique for the Clasico with the Spanish international confident he can’t shrug off the ankle injury first picked up in a 0-0 stalemate with Malaga last weekend.
“I think so,” he replied when asked if he will be fit to start.
“In the first-half I felt the ankle again, but hopefully I will be ok for Saturday.”

Chelsea stayed top, Manchester City registered a gritty win at Burnley, Manchester United lost more ground following yet another home draw and Liverpool were left sweating on Philippe Coutinho.
Here are five things we learned in the Premier League this weekend:
Chelsea can mix it too
Chelsea stormed to the top of the Premier League with a run of six successive wins in which they generally outclassed their opponents. But Saturday’s 2-1 comeback victory over Tottenham Hotspur showed they are also capable of going toe-to-toe with teams who prove themselves to be on the same level. Christian Eriksen gave Spurs an 11th-minute lead and Mauricio Pochettino’s side were truly dominant in the first half, but goals either side of half-time by Pedro Rodriguez and Victor Moses turned the game on its head. Chelsea got to grips with Spurs’ high press and withstood the visitors’ physicality in midfield to reclaim their place at the league summit. They visit Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City next weekend looking to record an eighth successive league victory for the first time since 2010.
Man City have depth in resources and spirit
Manchester City’s scruffy 2-1 win over Burnley on Saturday might have scored low on style points, but for Pep Guardiola, the trip to Turf Moor underlined the importance of his squad’s strength in depth. The City manager made five changes to his starting line-up following the mid-week Champions League draw against Borussia Moenchengladbach as he wanted “fresh legs”. The switches included leaving out defender John Stones and putting key midfielder Kevin De Bruyne on the bench. Burnley took a 14th-minute lead through Dean Marney’s volley, but City hit back to win via a pair of scrappy Sergio Aguero goals either side of half-time. City showed character to survive Burnley’s late pressure and record successive league wins for the first time since September.
Liverpool must learn to live without Coutinho
Liverpool’s 2-0 win over Sunderland came at the cost of an injury to Brazilian playmaker Philippe Coutinho, who could be out until the New Year with suspected ankle ligament damage. The 24-year-old has been Liverpool’s key attacking player to date this season, supplying five goals and six assists and reportedly attracting interest from Barcelona. With fellow schemer Adam Lallana currently nursing a groin injury and Sadio Mane set for Africa Cup of Nations duty with Senegal in January, manager Jurgen Klopp finds himself without Coutinho at a particularly unfortunate juncture.
Man United’s scoring problems are chronic
They may boast one of the most star-studded squads in world football, but Manchester United are currently experiencing a damaging goal shortage in the Premier League. Their 1-1 draw with West Ham United on Sunday was their fourth home league stalemate in succession — something they last experienced in 1980 — and in those games they have scored just three goals. United showed they know where the goal is in Thursday’s 4-0 Europa League win over Feyenoord, but their profligacy in the league is costing them. They currently stand in sixth place, a gaping 11 points below leaders Chelsea after just 13 matches.
Walcott is a happy dad
Theo Walcott might be in for a few sleepless nights after the birth of his second child, but the Arsenal winger produced a welcome delivery of his own to put his side on course for a 3-1 win over Bournemouth. Walcott’s partner Melanie did the hard work in bringing baby Arlo into the world on Friday and the England international marked the occasion with the crucial second goal at the Emirates Stadium on Sunday. Callum Wilson cancelled out Alexis Sanchez’s opener for Arsenal with a contentious penalty, but Walcott produced a rare header from Nacho Monreal’s 53rd-minute cross — celebrating with a ‘rock the baby’ gesture — to restore the hosts’ lead. Sanchez’s second goal secured victory as Arsenal ended a run of three straight draws.

While Cuban-Americans partied in the streets of Miami after Fidel Castro died, dissidents in Cuba stayed home, fearing more repression though some hope his brother Raul will enact reforms.
The wild celebrations in Florida, where many Cubans have fled since the 1959 revolution, contrasted sharply with the subdued reaction of government critics who endured his iron-fisted rule on the island.
The Ladies in White movement called off a regular protest on Sunday “out of respect” for those who mourn Castro and to avoid being accused of committing acts of “provocation,” said the group’s leader, Berta Soler.
The group was founded in 2003 after Fidel Castro’s regime imprisoned 75 dissidents who were the women’s husbands or sons. While all have since been released, the group has marched almost every Sunday, dressed in white.
Fidel Castro already transferred power to his brother Raul after falling ill in 2006, and Soler predicts that the communist regime will not change with the death.
“It will be the same Cuba with one dictator instead of two. The dictator Fidel Castro died and the dictator Raul Castro remains,” she said, adding that she expects the repression to “intensify.”
Police officers who were posted, as usual, outside the group’s headquarters left in the afternoon as it became clear no demonstration would take place, Soler said.
A picture of Castro featuring one of his speeches was placed across from their house about six months ago.
“It’s to remind us that Fidel is present,” Soler said, wearing a white shirt, white trousers and white shoes while fielding calls from journalists.
Her husband, Angel Moya, is hoping that US President-elect Donald Trump will take a harder stance against the government than Barack Obama, who restored diplomatic relations with Raul Castro.
“We are hopeful that this new US administration will at least firmly condemn the Cuban government, condemn it for its repeated human rights violations,” said Moya, 52, who served almost eight years in prison.
Trump called Fidel Castro a “brutal dictator” after his death and his advisers said he would strike a “better deal” with Cuba, but his incoming administration has yet to indicate what it will do about the diplomatic detente.
But other dissidents see Fidel Castro’s death as an opportunity for change on the island.
“Initially there will be more controls and repression, but eventually he or whoever succeeds him will have to start serious, deeper economic and political reforms,” said Jose Daniel Ferrer, one of the 75 former prisoners. “I think it’s a matter of time. How long? I think in one or two years”
Ferrer, who lives in Santiago de Cuba, said protests would not be held by dissidents in the eastern city, where Fidel Castro will be laid to rest next Sunday.
Raul Castro has implemented modest reforms that have slightly opened the government-controlled economy and in 2010 he released the last 52 of the 75 dissidents who had been jailed in 2003.
He has vowed to step down in 2018, but the one-party system has remained firmly in place.
Marta Beatriz Roque, one of the 75 people detained in 2003, said Fidel’s passing could prompt Raul Castro to enact more changes.
“Raul has a freer hand to do things that he couldn’t do before… out of respect for his brother,” Roque said from her home in Havana, where a signed picture of former US president George W. Bush hung on a wall.
She was watching television in her home on Friday night when Raul Castro appeared to announce his brother’s death.
“I am not happy about the death of anybody — even if it was the devil,” Roque said.

Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers says winning the Scottish League Cup is a tangible reward for his players after their great start to the season.
The Hoops cruised to a 3-0 win over Aberdeen at Hampden on Sunday thanks to first-half strikes from Australian international Tom Rogic and James Forrest while in-form French striker Moussa Dembele added a second-half penalty.
It seals a trophy at the first attempt for Rodgers, who joined the Glasgow giants in May, and the Celtic manager is pleased with the way the players have adapted since he arrived at Parkhead.
“I’m very proud to sit here as manager of Celtic and bring a trophy to the people that I love and the club that I support and for the players,” the former Liverpool manager said.
“Everyone has talked about the good start and the great football but you want something to show for it.
“This was our first chance and I thought they were magnificent.
“For the players it is something to show for the great work they’ve been doing.
“We’ve talked about how we need to improve the team but of course you have to then have something to show for it and the players on the podium at the end had something to show.
“It is great for their confidence and sets us up really well now going on into the season.”
The win saw Celtic claim the 100th trophy of their 128-year history and Rodgers said it marked a major milestone for the club.
“It is a winning club. That’s what the great history of this club has been based upon.
“Now we need to look to the next one and start off the next century of trophies and that will be important for us and the club.”
It is just six months since Rodgers signed on at Celtic Park and the former Liverpool boss has given his side, who are unbeaten domestically this season and top the Scottish Premiership by eight points, an air of invincibility in Scotland.
The Hoops remain on course for a first domestic treble since 2000/01 and Rodgers declared himself pleased with the progress that has been made in such a short space of time.
“It’s six months and a week to the day that I came in. We talked about what we wanted to achieve and how we wanted to do it and we’re certainly well on our way to that.
“I have to be pleased. We’re trying to improve standards on and off the field but you can never become complacent.
“It’s still very early but we’re shaping up the team to play in a certain style and way. That’s going very well but there’s things that myself and my staff can analyse to see where we can do better and where we can improve.
“I’ve got a huge job to do here in terms of sustaining this and building on it. But at this moment in time after only six months of course it is a great achievement.”
It is the third defeat Celtic have inflicted on the Dons — who have provided their main challenge in recent years — this season and Aberdeen manager Derek McInnes admitted the gap between the sides was becoming harder to bridge.
“Celtic will need to have a poor day for teams to beat them,” the Dons boss said. “They will improve again in January and it will become more difficult but I certainly think we can compete with them over 90 minutes.
“If we play them in the Scottish Cup final at the end of the season I still think we can beat them as long as my team learn from this.”

Arsene Wenger admitted Arsenal had to conquer their nerves before securing the 3-1 win that thrust them back in the Premier League title race.
Wenger’s side had fallen six points behind leaders Chelsea after drawing three of their last four league games and they were in danger of another damaging setback at the Emirates Stadium on Sunday.
Having led through Alexis Sanchez’s early goal, the Gunners were pegged back by Callum Wilson’s controversial penalty midway through the first half.
With the Arsenal faithful getting restless, Wenger revealed he had tried to calm his players down at half-time as they wrestled with the anxieties caused by three successive draws.
They responded to Wenger’s pep talk by scoring twice after half-time through Theo Walcott and Sanchez to move within three points of Chelsea.
“We started well but when they equalised we became nervous,” Wenger said.
“That is where the three draws were on our mind. It was down to us to calm down at half-time and just focus on the game.”
Wenger was frustrated by referee Mike Jones’ decision to award Bournemouth’s penalty for an innocuous collision between Wilson and Nacho Monreal and he was fearing the worst at that point.
“My view is we should have had a penalty on Sanchez and Bournemouth’s was a very soft one,” he said.
“It was shoulder to shoulder. I was really amazed he gave it.
“We became nervous and they became more dynamic. For me it’s not exactly the side I wanted to play. They are a tricky side and keep the ball well.”
Driven on by the irrepressible Sanchez, Arsenal eventually find their rhythm in the second half and Wenger was quick to pay tribute to the Chile forward, who has scored 10 goals this season.
“Sanchez, even though he looks dead he is still alive. He finds the resources to win the ball and do something special,” Wenger said.
“He has the guts. He has that conditioning which allows him to always find an extra gear to be dangerous.”
Wenger said he knows keeping Sanchez is essential if Arsenal are to challenge for major silverware, even if performances like this mean he could demand a bigger salary.
Asked if Arsenal were any closer to tying up a contract extension with Sanchez, Wenger added: “It is important, how important I don’t know.
“We won’t do that tonight. We have some time.
“You (the media) like us to spend money, so you should be happy!”
Bournemouth manager Eddie Howe was frustrated that his team left empty-handed despite an enterprising display and he took a shot at Jones for failing to award his team a second penalty for a handball by Monreal.
“We were well in that game, we created a number of chances. The 3-1 scoreline is difficult to take,” he said.
“It’s difficult here, especially when you are Bournemouth. A couple of things have gone against us.
“I’m not a fan of really soft penalties, but a bit of consistency seems to have gone out of the game.
“But we were without a number of players today and there wasn’t much between the teams.
“The future of the team is good. I back us to be okay this season.”

Jose Mourinho faces disciplinary action from the FA, and an almost definite touchline suspension, after being sent to the stands by referee Jon Moss during a 1-1 Premier League home draw with West Ham.
It is the third time in less than two months that the fiery Manchester United manager will face disciplinary action from the sport?s ruling body.
In late October, he was suspended for one game, and fined 8,000 pounds (9,400 euros/$10,000), for an altercation with referee Mark Clattenburg during a draw with Burnley.
That incident followed a 50,000-pound punishment for comments made about the decision to allow referee Anthony Taylor to officiate the game with Liverpool.
The latest flashpoint also involved a referee with whom Mourinho has recent history.
Last season, while in charge of Chelsea, Mourinho had an altercation with the same official in a game at West Ham which resulted in a one-match stadium ban for the Portuguese.
A year on, against the same opposition and with the same referee, Mourinho kicked a water bottle fully 20 yards to protest Taylor?s decision to caution Paul Pogba for simulation after 27 minutes, a card that rules the French international out of United?s League Cup quarter-final tie — again with West Ham — at Old Trafford on Wednesday.
“I think everyone saw his frustration was shown in that situation,” said assistant manager Rui Faria after Mourinho refused to speak post-match.
“It should have been a free-kick for us and it ended with a yellow card for Paul and he is out of our next match.
“So there are maybe reasons to express some frustration. After that, things that are part of the game and the referee took a decision.
“But I think everything comes from a decision that should be the opposite way.”
By that stage Zlatan Ibrahimovic had equalised an early opening goal from Diafra Sakho.
But, as has been the norm recently, Mourinho?s team could not find a winner as they recorded a fourth consecutive home league draw — the first time since 1990 they have gone four home games without victory.
More worrying yet, United have now recorded their worst start to a season, after 13 games, since 1989-90, the season that saw Sir Alex Ferguson famously win the FA Cup after surviving strenuous calls for his dismissal from supporters.
“We were the best team on the pitch,” said Faria. “We didn?t have any tactical issues during the game. Defensively we were very compact. Offensively we created the chances to win.
“We are showing that as a team we are a strong side and we can do very good things. We create chances that in a normal way should be goals and the game should be in a comfortable way.
“It is not happening. We get frustrated. The only thing we need to do is keep working because then things will change for us.”
West Ham manager Slaven Bilic sympathised with his opposite number for his latest disciplinary problems.
“I don?t know if he deserved to be sent off, I don?t know the rules,” said Bilic. “I don?t want any manager, especially him, to be sent off. It is hard to judge from our angle if it is a dive or a foul so I can understand it but I don?t want him to be sent off.
“I have seen him. We didn?t talk about the mood but he is a gentleman. I like him.”
But the West Ham manager saw promising signs of recovery in his team?s display at Old Trafford.
“It is a difficult season and I am not trying to avoid saying that,” said Bilic, whose side is just a point above the drop zone.
“I am not happy with the position, we are still paying the price for September, when we had injuries — lost against Watford, West Brom, Southampton, Middlesbrough.
“But recently there are really good performances from us. It is only a matter of time when we get the points. We could have lost today but still I would say the same thing.”

Jordan Morris scored a second half goal on Sunday as the Seattle Sounders defeated the Colorado Rapids 1-0 to reach their first MLS championship final in franchise history.
Morris scored in the 56th minute on a pass from Nelson Haedo Valdez as the Sounders took the semi-final series 3-1 in aggregate scoring. The Sounders won the first game of the Western Conference final 2-1 on Tuesday and needed only a tie to move on.
Seattle will play Toronto or Montreal on December 10 for the league title.
Toronto hosts Montreal in the second leg of the Eastern final Wednesday. The Impact won the first leg 3-2 in Montreal.
“The whole group just figures out ways to win games. That is their biggest strength,” said head coach Brian Schmetzer. “Each game is different. This was a game against a tough opponent and they found a way to win.
“It is the whole entire team effort that has brought us to this point.”
The Rapids played without their number one goalie Tim Howard who suffered a bad groin injury while playing for the US National team. Howard had season-ending surgery on November 17.
Morris, who was named the league’s rookie of the year earlier this month, scored early in the second half on a sliding chip over Howard’s replacement Zac MacMath.
The ball deflected off a Rapid defender to Valdez who sent it on to Morris who was able to get past the Colorado defence.
MacMath failed to make a sliding stop as the goal gave Seattle a nearly insurmountable aggregate goal lead.
“Great ball from Valdez. I saw there was a little opening there and I just tried to get it over (MacMath),” said Morris.
“It is so great for the team to accomplish this. It is for our fans. They deserve it.”
It was only the eighth goal Colorado gave up at home this season.
The Rapids controlled the play in the first half and created several scoring chances with the best coming in the 23rd minute from Kevin Doyle. He came down the left side but was unable to connect on a centring pass attempt to teammate Sebastien Le Toux.
Shkelzen Gashi set up a shot for Jermaine Jones in the 32nd minute and later had a free kick from just outside the box that was blocked.

Brazil’s President Michel Temer, together with congressional leaders, vowed on Sunday to block any attempt by legislators to grant themselves a corruption amnesty as he sought to defuse a series of scandals.
In a rare weekend news conference, the president sought to reassure Brazilians that he is fighting corruption among the political elite and working to restore an economy that he predicted will see an upturn in the second quarter of 2017.
Temer — a center-right veteran politician who took power after the bruising impeachment of his leftist predecessor Dilma Rousseff — has stated his mission is to save Brazil from its worst recession and corruption scandal in decades.
However, the country’s would-be savior is now beset by controversy himself just as the Senate prepares to vote Tuesday on a 20-year spending freeze that would be the first of several deep reforms billed as measures to restore the economy’s health.
Seated alongside the speakers of the Senate and lower house of Congress, Temer said he would veto any attempt by the legislature to grant itself an amnesty on undeclared campaign donations.
“It would be impossible for the president of the republic to approve something of this nature,” he said. “We all agreed there isn’t the slightest basis… for going ahead with this proposal.”
He was responding to public outrage over an attempt in the lower house on Thursday to vote on a bill apparently including an amnesty for the previous acceptance of undeclared funds — often suspected to be bribes — in political campaigns.
Temer, who took office vowing to end the paralysis and infighting of the Rousseff presidency, was also forced to respond to the latest crisis within his own cabinet.
It involves a powerful minister, government secretary Geddel Vieira Lima, who forced to resign on Friday after the former culture minister accused him of pressuring him to intervene in a business deal. The ministerial resignation was the sixth since Temer took over in May.
The former culture minister has claimed that Temer also pressured him over the business deal and that he had secretly recorded the president, according to local media reports.
Temer said he had never misused his influence and blasted the use of secret recordings.
“For a minister to record the president of the republic is extremely serious,” Temer said.
The televised show of unity between Temer and the two congressional leaders suggested the president retains enough political capital for now to proceed with his economic reforms.
He promised recession-weary Brazilians that they would notice positive changes.
“We’re not standing still, we’re working to build growth, and this will come little by little,” he said, predicting “results” in the second quarter.
“We will propose reforms so that Brazil can exit the recession,” he added. “We will boost industry, business and agribusiness.”
But the 20-year spending ceiling — to be followed by proposed cuts to social security, pensions and other politically sensitive areas — has already prompted fury in some quarters.
In downtown Sao Paulo, thousands of people gathered Sunday for a rally that organizers said attracted 40,000 demonstrators, although police did not provide any official figures.
Meanwhile, Temer and the elite in Brasilia face a potentially devastating new storm on the corruption front.
Numerous members of Congress and political parties have already been linked to the alleged receipt of bribe money and campaign slush funds as part of the giant Petrobras state oil company embezzlement scandal.
That could soon expand with accusations stemming from a mass plea bargain struck with dozens of executives at the construction giant Odebrecht, the company at the core of the Petrobras scheme.
Odebrecht systematically bribed politicians and parties, partly to win inflated contracts with Petrobras.
Now, Brazilian media reports indicate that the executives may name as many as 150 politicians in the plea bargains struck with investigating prosecutors.
Temer said it would be “naive” not to be worried about the coming revelations.
“When you’re talking about… 150 people from the political class, of course there’s concern, in an institutional sense.”

Uli Hoeness has returned as Bayern Munich’s president, Borussia Dortmund slumped after their midweek Champions League goal fest and new boys RB Leipzig remain unbeaten and top of the league.
Here are five things we learned from the twelfth round of matches in the Bundesliga:
Hoeness returns… and apologises
Despite only having been released in February after 21 months in prison for tax evasion, Uli Hoeness was re-elected as Bayern Munich’s president on Friday and the interim seems to have softened him.
The 64-year-old — who was the only candidate — received 97.7 percent of the vote in the club’s annual general meeting.
He has atoned for his tax sins, but in the euphoria of re-election, Hoeness had declared current Bundesliga leaders RB Leipzig had joined Borussia Dortmund as “Bayern’s second enemy”.
However, Hoeness showed a softer side by apologising within 24 hours.
“In football — there are rivals and opponents,” Hoeness told Sky before Bayern’s 2-1 win over Bayer Leverkusen.
“I’d officially like to take the word ‘enemy’ back and I apologise for it.”
There could be a family reason for Hoeness’ apology: nephew Sebastian Hoeness coaches Leipzig’s Under 17s.
Dortmund’s dodgy defending
“We were deficient technically, tactically and mentally. From the first to the 90th minute,” fumed coach Thomas Tuchel after Borussia Dortmund’s 2-1 defeat at Eintracht Frankfurt.
Having routed Legia Warsaw 8-4 on Tuesday — a record score for a Champions League game — Dortmund’s defending was again poor as both Eintracht goals came from restarts.
Hungary midfielder Szabolcs Huszti opened the scoring 16 seconds into the second-half.
Swiss striker Haris Seferovic netted the winner 66 seconds after the restart following Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s equaliser for Dortmund.
Having heavily rotated his starting line-up, with nine changes for Legia and eight in Frankfurt, Tuchel must fix Dortmund’s defensive frailties in January’s winter break before they the Champions League’s knock-out phase.
Leipzig’s Bulls charge on
The ‘Bulls’, as RB Leipzig are nicknamed, continue their unbeaten charge.
Their impressive 4-1 win at Freiburg on Friday left second-placed Bayern six points adrift before Carlo Ancelotti’s side beat Bayer Leverkusen 2-1 on Saturday to halve the advantage.
Leipzig have lost none of their first 12 Bundesliga games – a record for a club in their debut Bundesliga season.
Having been knocked out of the German Cup in the first round last August, Leipzig are only involved in the Bundesliga.
Without having to rotate, coach Ralph Hasenhuettl has used a core of six players who have played in all 12 league games so far.
By comparison, only two Bayern players — Robert Lewandowski and Manuel Neuer — have featured in all of Munich’s league games.
“Through all of the victories, we are only getting hungrier and there has been a breathtaking development since exiting the cup,” said Hasenhuettl.
Leipzig finish the weekend three points clear of Bayern with the teams set to meet at Munich’s Allianz Arena on December 21.
Lahm: Bayern’s director-in-waiting
Ex-Germany captain Philipp Lahm could be Bayern Munich’s director of sport next season.
Having joined Bayern as an 11-year-old, the 33-year-old club captain made his 367th Bundesliga appearance against Leverkusen.
Lahm has a playing contract until June 2018, but looks set to fill the role Matthias Sammer vacated in April.
“We will have, in the not-too-distant future, a director of sport again”, revealed chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge.
“He has to tick the way Bayern ticks.
“We have someone at the back of our minds, but he’s currently still playing.”
Lahm told magazine Sport Bild at the start of the month that he may retire from all football at the end of the season and said “talks will take place” when asked about Rummenigge’s comments.
Wash clothes, score goals
With seven goals in 12 games, RB Leipzig’s top-scorer Timo Werner is a key part of their rise having joined from relegated VfB Stuttgart for 10 million euros ($10.5m).
His two goals in Friday’s win at Freiburg was the third time he has scored twice in a Bundesliga game this season.
The 20-year-old says moving leaving the family home for Leizpig improved his game.
“It’s made me more confident,” he said.
“I have to do my own shopping and the clothes don’t wash themselves.”