Month: December 2016

Sites for the new sports of surfing, climbing, skateboarding, karate and baseball at the Tokyo Games were approved by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Wednesday.
The Kujukuri beach in Chiba prefecture, 100km to the east of Tokyo, will see the first ever Olympic surfing event contested.
Temporary structures will be built at the Aomi Urban Sports Venue in Tokyo to host the climbing and skateboarding, which along with surfing is part of the IOC’s drive to rejuvenate the Games.
For local sports fans, karate is also back on the Olympic roster and bouts will be housed in the revamped Nippon Budokan centre in Tokyo.
The Yokohama stadium built in 1978 will be used to host baseball and softball, which are highly popular in Japan.
The prospect of staging some baseball games at Fukushima, scene of a nuclear incident after a tsunami in 2011, has not yet been ruled out, Tokyo 2020 officials said.

An Irish court on Wednesday released 100 million euros ($107 million) in frozen assets for exiled former Russian oil tycoon and Kremlin foe Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Irish Times reported.
Dublin District Court judge Timothy Lucey said there were no reasonable grounds for maintaining a freeze on the funds which was imposed in 2011 following an embezzlement ruling against him in Russia.
The 53-year-old former oligarch, who spent a decade in prison on controversial charges and now lives mainly in Britain while supporting opposition forces in Russia, welcomed the news.
“Mikhail Khodorkovsky welcomed the decision of the Dublin District Court on unfreezing assets of the investment fund of which he is a beneficiary,” said a statement from his foundation, Open Russia.
“He noted that he will spend a portion of the unfrozen funds to support the work of the Open Russia movement, which he founded in 2014,” it said.
Andrei Kondakov, head of the International Centre for Legal Protection, which leads Russia’s defence on claims relating to Khodorkovsky’s former Yukos oil empire, protested the ruling.
“The Russian side is extremely surprised by today’s decision by the Irish court as it had not been properly informed of Khodorkovsky’s appeal,” he said.
Russia “did not have the chance to take part in the proceedings and provide the necessary evidence on the illegal origin of these funds,” he added.
Contacted by AFP, Khodorkovsky’s Irish lawyer Dara Robinson was not available for comment.
Khodorkovsky was convicted two highly controversial tax evasion and fraud trials that were widely seen as the Kremlin’s retribution for him getting involved in opposition politics.
After he was unexpectedly pardoned by Putin and released in late 2013, Khodorkovsky moved abroad and he now supports various opposition projects in Russia.

Yannick Noah was named captain of France’s Fed Cup team for the second time on Wednesday, just five days after having his contract as Davis Cup skipper extended by a year.
The 56-year-old former French Open champion takes over the national women’s team from Amelie Mauresmo who held the job from 2013 to 2016.
Mauresmo stepped down last month after revealing she was pregnant, a day after the team lost in the final to the Czech Republic.
Noah led the Fed Cup team to the 1997 title with victory over the Netherlands.
The 1983 Roland Garros champion will take charge for the first time in his second spell when France face Switzerland in Geneva on February 11 and 12.
Noah took over the Davis Cup team for a third time in September 2015 after captaining France to victory in 1991 and 1996.
France lost in the semi-finals of the 2016 Davis Cup to Croatia and travel to Japan for the first round of the 2017 edition in February 3-5.

Around a third of the estimated 5,000 European jihadists who went to Syria and Iraq have returned to Europe, and some may have orders to attack, an EU report warned Wednesday.
Up to 2,500 fighters from Europe remained on the battlefield but their massive return in the short term seemed unlikely, according to the report seen by AFP.
Belgium expressed concern last month that jihadists were increasingly returning to Europe as US-backed coalition forces drive the Islamic State (IS) group from territory in Syria and Iraq.
The report said between 15 to 20 percent of the Europeans have died on the battlefield, around 30 to 35 percent have returned and 50 percent remain in the battle theatre, which amounted to between 2,000 and 2,500 Europeans.
As many as 1,750 may have returned, based on the percentages listed in the report which EU counter-terrorism coordinator Gilles de Kerchove will present to EU interior ministers on Friday.
The report said there were two types of “foreign terrorist fighters” returning.
“Those in the majority that will drift back, and those who will be sent back on specific missions, which are of most concern,” the report warned.
It said even some European women and children born or raised in the so-called caliphate declared by IS in Iraq and Syria could pose a security threat as they may have been radicalised.
Without giving figures, it said some returnees have been convicted and serving prison sentences, while others are being monitored and some are free in their communities.
It recalled that foreign fighters who have returned to Europe have staged both foiled and successful attacks, including the slaughter in Paris in November last year and this year’s bombings in Brussels in March.
Both sets of attacks were claimed by IS, which is also known by its Arabic acronym Daesh.
“There is also a significant foreign terrorist fighter contingent with Daesh in Libya which might attempt to use their nationality or family connections to return to Europe,” the report said.
It said returnees were keeping in touch with Daesh in the Middle East via social media and increasingly turning from mainstream Twitter to the encrypted one-to-one messaging service Telegram.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino wants to expand the World Cup finals to 48 teams featuring 16 groups of three starting with the 2026 tournament, a source within world football’s governing body told AFP on Wednesday.
Infantino, who had until now proposed a 48-team event but with a traditional 32 countries advancing to the finals, will submit his latest proposal at a FIFA Council meeting in Zurich on January 9-10.
A letter outlining the new format was due to be sent to the members of the FIFA Council on Wednesday, the source said, adding that the format was “preferred by president Infantino.”
Under the new format, the source said, “every qualified team would play at least two group matches. The top two in each group would then go through to the last 32.”
The FIFA Council will vote on several proposals at their January meeting: whether to maintain the current World Cup format of 32 teams, extend it to 40 teams or go to 48 teams.
In the latter case they will vote on whether to have an initial play-off before 32 teams go into a group stage, or whether to go with Infantino’s now preferred option.
The successor to the disgraced Sepp Blatter had previously floated the idea of having 32 teams going into a play-off round, with the 16 winners joining another 16 sides in the group stage.
The play-off matches would be staged in the country hosting the finals, but would mean the losers go home after just one game.
“This way, every team is guaranteed at least two matches and then we have knockout matches from the last 32,” the source added of the 16-group proposal.
“Furthermore, this formula offers two advantages. Each confederation has a guaranteed number of qualified teams and it is easier to understand for spectators, television companies and sponsors.”
The source added that this format “seems to be liked” by the different federations.
The proposal to change the format of the competition is driven by a desire to increase income from marketing and television rights, even if the costs would also increase with an expanded tournament.
Infantino, formerly Michel Platini’s right-hand man at UEFA, said recently he was in favour of a World Cup jointly organised by several countries to share out the burden of providing facilities for the tournament.
“We don’t want white elephants,” he said in reference to stadiums that have been built for past World Cups and then left without a purpose after the tournament. “We want facilities that will last.”
Infantino was general secretary of UEFA when European football’s governing body expanded the European Championship from 16 teams to 24 for this year’s finals in France.
They also approved staging Euro 2020 in 13 different countries around the continent.
And the Swiss-Italian has also been looking to expand the FIFA Club World Cup from the current seven-team format to a 32-club competition and hosting it in June instead of December.
This year’s competition in Japan begins on Thursday, with Real Madrid the favourites.

Prosecutors urged UN judges on Wednesday to jail Ratko Mladic for life, accusing the former Serb commander of a ruthless campaign of ethnic cleansing to create a Greater Serbia in the 1990s Balkans wars.
“It would be… an insult to the victims, living and dead, and an affront to justice to impose any sentence other than the most severe available one: a life sentence,” prosecutor Alan Tieger told the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
“The time has come for General Mladic to be held accountable for those crimes against each of his victims and the communities he destroyed.”
Once dubbed “the Butcher of Bosnia”, Mladic, 74, has denied 11 charges including two of genocide, as well as war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the bloody 1992-95 Bosnian conflict.
More than 100,000 people died and 2.2 million others were left homeless in what prosecutors say was a relentless campaign aimed at chasing all non-Serbs from Bosnian territory with the aim of creating a Greater Serbia.
After living openly in Serbia despite an international arrest warrant against him, Mladic was finally captured in 2011 after 16 years on the run. His trial opened in May 2012.
During three days of closing arguments, prosecutors dismissed defence claims that Mladic, as the commander of Serbian forces, only had a limited role in the Bosnian conflict, maintaining he was the man “who was in charge, who called the shots.”
The defence team will now open three days of closing arguments on Friday and into next week.
A verdict and judgement are not expected until some time in 2017.
Mladic is notably accused of being behind the punishing 44-month siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, which claimed an estimated 10,000 lives in a relentless campaign of shelling and sniping.
According to Unicef figures, by 1994 40 percent of children in the city had been “directly shot at by snipers”, some 39 percent had seen one or several relatives killed and the homes of 73 percent had been attacked, the prosecutors said.
Mladic, whose trial is the last before the ICTY, also stands accused of genocide for his role in the killings in Srebrenica, Europe’s worst bloodshed since World War II.
“Srebrenica has been a catastrophe for the Muslim community of eastern Bosnia, a tragedy of such proportions that my words here today cannot begin to convey to you the suffering experienced by the people of Srebrenica,” another prosecutor, Peter McCloskey, told the tribunal on Wednesday.
“But the greatest tragedy is no longer found in the dead, for their suffering is over. We must also remember the families left behind,” he said.
“There is too much pain, there is too much loss for any of us to truly comprehend the nature and scope of the shared misery of the women and survivors of the Srebrenica community.”
Six people, including former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic sentenced to 40 years jail in March, have been found guilty of genocide at Srebrenica.
But to the dismay of victims, judges have so far ruled that there has been insufficient evidence in any of the trials to prove that genocide was committed in seven other municipalities.
“It is hard to say that a life sentence would make us happy,” Hajra Catic, head of the Women of Srebrenica association, told AFP about Mladic.
“But any other verdict would not satisfy us.”
Catic, who lost 20 male family members including her husband and a son, said: “No one can bring our children back, but it is very important for us that Mladic is proclaimed guilty of genocide, since it will remain written in history forever.”

Spanish police said Wednesday they had smashed a criminal gang of Iranians and Pakistanis who preyed on tourists in Barcelona by posing as police, just days after dismantling a similar ring in Madrid.
The gang would stop tourists near hotels and Barcelona’s airport and ask to see identification or perform searches and would then grab cash, watches, smartphones and other valuables and quickly flee, Catalonia’s regional police force said in a statement.
The ring also stopped cars with foreign licence plates on highways near Barcelona and then robbed the occupants of the vehicles said the force, the Mossos d’Esquadra.
Police arrested eight suspected members of the ring, all Iranian and Pakistani nationals, last week in Badalona, a Barcelona suburb, and Valencia.
The suspects — six men, a woman and a minor — are believed to have taken part in 40 robberies.
Among the loot recovered during the arrests were several luxury watches, 5,000 euros in cash and a “huge amount” of electronic devices.
“The hoax they carried out could only be carried out on foreigners because anyone who lives here would understand they were not police officers from the way they behaved,” Mossos d’Esquadra inspector Jordi Olle told a news conference.
Catalan police said members of the criminal gang travelled across Spain and had also operated in Madrid and Valencia.
Spain’s national police said Monday they had smashed a criminal gang which preyed on tourists in Madrid in the same way, with the arrest last month of nine suspects, all Pakistani and Iranian nationals. That gang is suspected of carrying out at least 21 robberies.

The UN’s top court on Wednesday ordered France to ensure the protection of Equatorial Guinea’s diplomatic mission in Paris, and rejected a French request to dump a case brought by Malabo.
“France shall, pending a final decision in the case, take all measures at its disposal” to ensure the “inviolability” of a building in Avenue Foch, Paris, described by the African nation as a diplomatic mission, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled.
France disputes that the building is a diplomatic mission.
But the tribunal in The Hague sidestepped Equatorial Guinea’s demand to order France to temporarily suspend a corruption trial before French courts brought against the son of its president, saying it would not make any other provisional measures in the case.
Malabo argued the French trial of Teodorin Obiang should be frozen until the ICJ has ruled on its complaint that France has violated Obiang’s diplomatic immunity.
Obiang, the 47-year-old son of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea’s veteran ruler, goes on trial in France in January on charges of plundering his country’s coffers to fund a jet-set lifestyle.
Promoted by his father Teodoro Obiang Nguema to vice president in June, Obiang is accused of using the proceeds of corruption and embezzlement to fund an array of purchases, from a luxury home to private jets and top properties, to pop star Michael Jackson’s famous white glove.
In 2012, French authorities swooped on the Obiang family’s six-storey mansion on Avenue Foch — one of the most upmarket addresses in Paris — seizing it along with a fleet of luxury cars including two Bugatti Veyrons and a Rolls-Royce Phantom.
Police also took away vanloads of valuables, including paintings, a $4.2-million clock and fine wines worth thousands of euros per bottle.
Reading the judgement, vice president Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf said the court was “of the view that, pending a final decision in the case, the premises presented as housing the diplomatic mission of Equatorial Guinea at 42 avenue Foch in Paris should enjoy treatment” afforded diplomatic missions under the Geneva Convention.
The court also “rejects the request of France to remove the case” from its workload, Yusuf added.
Obiang’s trial will be the first arising from a series of landmark investigations in France into the allegedly ill-gotten gains of a handful of African leaders.

Damaging EU economic sanctions imposed on Russia over the Ukraine crisis must be kept in place to force Moscow to meet its Minsk ceasefire commitments, NATO head Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday.
His comments come as the European Union discusses renewal of the sanctions amid doubts about their effectiveness and cost, and concerns that US President-elect Donald Trump may take a softer line on Russia.
“The international community must keep pressure on Russia to respect its obligations, especially (when) the security situation in eastern Ukraine remains so serious,” Stoltenberg said after NATO foreign ministers met their Ukrainian counterpart in Brussels.
“It’s important that the economic sanctions be maintained.”
The 28-nation European Union — of which 22 members also belong to NATO — imposed economic sanctions on Russia after a Malaysian airliner was shot down over rebel-held eastern Ukraine in July 2014.
They have been rolled over regularly since then but on several occasions Italy — which traditionally has close ties with Russia — has called for a debate before going ahead.
EU president Donald Tusk said last month he was confident the sanctions would be approved before an EU leaders summit on December 15 but diplomatic sources told AFP Wednesday that Italy was once again holding up the process.
“The Italians want that to happen following a discussion at the summit and a presentation of the position on the ground by (French President Francois) Hollande and (German Chancellor Angela) Merkel,” one EU source said.
France and Germany brokered a series of accords in the Belarus capital Minsk in late 2014 and 2015 which committed Russia to ending support for the rebels in return for greater autonomy.
The West says Russia supplies the rebels with military hardware and assistance, a charge Moscow denies although it says it does support their cause.
Stoltenberg said the meeting with Ukraine Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin demonstrated NATO’s “unwavering support” for Kiev in the face of “a massive increase in ceasefire violations.”
“Russia has a significant responsibility in bringing the conflict to an end,” he said, regretting lack of progress in recent talks between France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said separately he expected the economic sanctions to be rolled over without much difficulty given the impasse over Ukraine.
Besides the economic measures, which target Russia’s oil, financial and military sectors, the EU has also imposed a separate series of travel ban and asset freeze sanctions against Ukraine and Russian figures deemed to have undermined Ukrainian territorial integrity. These sanctions expire in March.
Similar sanctions imposed over the annexation of Crimea run to end-June 2017.

Islamist militias attacked Libya’s key oil-producing region on Wednesday and were repelled by forces commanded by controversial general Khalifa Haftar, military sources said.
The Benghazi Defence Brigades attacked Ben Jawad town near the coastal “oil crescent”, where Haftar had seized four export terminals from pro-government forces in September.
The alliance of Islamist and tribal fighters was then repelled by Haftar’s forces, Colonel Moftah el-Magarief, head of an oil facilities guard under Haftar’s control, told AFP.
“We have taken control of Ben Jawad and seized equipment and prisoners from the Benghazi Defence Brigade,” he said.
“The air force targeted equipment belonging to the attacking force and we can confirm that all the oil fields and terminals are under our forces’ control.”
An engineer at the Al-Sidra port, 30 kilometres (20 miles) east of Ben Jawad, said an aircraft belonging to Haftar’s forces had bombed a column of military vehicles belonging to the Benghazi fighters.
“The Benghazi Brigades (then) targeted us with Grad rockets,” he said.
Libya’s oil exporting region is bitterly contested between the country’s internationally recognised Government of National Accord and a rival administration in the east, supported by Haftar.
Pro-GNA forces this week ousted the Islamic State group from its coastal bastion of Sirte, between Tripoli and the oil crescent, after a seven-month battle.
Experts have raised fears that having won in Sirte, GNA forces would move to retake the oil crescent, triggering renewed fighting between forces allied with the two rival governments.
But the GNA on Wednesday denied reports it had ordered any group to advance on the area.
In a statement, it said it was “in no way involved with the military escalation on Wednesday in the oil crescent”.
Rocked by chaos and divisions since the fall of dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011, Libya desperately needs to relaunch its oil exports, the backbone of its economy.
The head of its National Oil Corporation warned in September that the country faced financial collapse unless it swiftly resumed exports.

The fierce Buenos Aires derby between River Plate and Boca Juniors is back on Sunday after Argentine referees scrapped a plan to strike over demands for protection from violence.
The referees union (SADRA) had called the strike after a referee was attacked by players and supporters following a pitch invasion during a lower-division match last Sunday.
But on Wednesday SADRA representative Guillermo Marconi said they had suspended the strike after football chiefs agreed to talks.
“We have been successful because the Argentine Football Association is willing to discuss the entire protocol for referees’ safety,” he told reporters.
“There is no way the labor ministry can avoid the negotiation process.”
The Buenos Aires “superclasico” and all other matches in the federation’s five leagues had risked being cancelled this weekend.
Six football fans have died this year in match-related violence, according to the non-government group Salvemos el Futbol.

Novak Djokovic failed to train hard enough and will not regain the top world ranking unless he “puts in the hours”, former coach Boris Becker says, after the pair split.
Djokovic has won 12 Grand Slam titles — six under Becker — but on Tuesday the Serb confirmed rumours that he and the German legend had parted ways after three years together.
“He has not spent as much time on the practice court as he should have in the last six months and he knows that,” Becker, 49, told Sky Sports News.
“Success doesn’t come by pushing a button. You have to work your butt off because that is what your opponents are doing.”
After winning the French Open in June, Djokovic had a poor second half of the season, losing the world number one ranking he had held for 122 weeks to Britain’s Andy Murray in November.
Djokovic also lost his Wimbledon and US Open titles and was eliminated in the first round of the Rio Olympics.
He made a change to his coaching team towards the end of the season and Spaniard Pepe Imaz joined him for the Paris Masters, where the four-time champion fell in the quarter-finals, and the World Tour Finals in London — where he lost to Murray.
“Such a decision does not happen overnight, it was a process,” said Becker, calling their separation “consensual”.
Becker, a three-time Wimbledon winner, says he will now be Djokovic’s “greatest fan” and believes the 29-year-old will regain his number one status.
“I am also convinced that he will become the most dominant player again, but he has to get back on the practice court and put in the necessary hours,” said Becker.
“Novak must concentrate on what has made him strong.”

Germany’s ruling conservatives may have re-elected Angela Merkel as their leader once again, but they have also sent her into next year’s election campaign with a stern warning ringing in her ears.
The German leader was chosen as head of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) on Tuesday with her lowest score since becoming chancellor, and a day later delegates defied her with a hardline push against dual nationality rules.
With that mixed verdict from the party rank and file as she bids for a fourth term at the head of Europe’s biggest economy, Merkel is facing her toughest election campaign yet, weakened by her liberal refugee policy that has polarised public opinion.
While 89.5 percent is hardly a score to be scoffed at, it missed the 90 percent of CDU delegates seen as a crucial threshold.
“It shows that she has lost confidence but has not fully regained it,” said Spiegel Online.
Rheinische Post daily agreed, saying that “it is clear that this chancellor is no longer strong enough to simply use ‘you know me’ to win the 2017 elections,” referring to a previous Merkel slogan.
“That attitude, which helped her in the 2013 (general election) campaign, almost led to her doom in the refugee crisis. For too long, she has trusted her party and voters to simply follow her,” it said.
Merkel’s decision last September to let in people fleeing war has become her Achilles heel, as public resentment mounted after more than a million asylum seekers have arrived in Europe’s biggest economy since the start of 2015.
The displeasure has been manifested in setbacks for her party in five consecutive state elections this year, as the upstart populist AfD recorded a surge of support on the back of their campaign railing against migrants.
“We’re winning few voters from the left, but we’re losing a lot to the right,” said delegate Eugen Abele, accusing Merkel of positioning the party too far left and giving room for the AfD to stake a claim to the party’s right.
Merkel herself has laid out a tough stance on immigration and even called for a partial ban on the Islamic full-face veil, as she pleaded with her delegates for help in her fight for a new term.
But for some, it did not go far enough.
On Wednesday, the junior wing of the CDU mounted a small rebellion and forced through a demand for dual nationality be scrapped for German-born children of foreigners.
The hardline measure set the party on a collision course with its junior coalition partner the Social Democrats (SPD) ahead of elections next year, and underlined the challenge faced by Merkel to rein in the more conservative wing of her party.
Allowing dual nationality was a key demand of the SPD during negotiations with Merkel’s conservatives after the last elections in 2013 that resulted in a hard-fought deal on teaming up in a left-right government.
“I personally think it would be wrong to turn back on this,” a displeased Merkel said in response to the motion.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere warned during a heated debate on the issue against tearing up the compromise.
“We don’t want to reverse that,” he said, adding that it was also a blow for children of foreign origin at a time when the country is struggling with integration issues.
The move mainly affects Turkish migrants, many of whom had come to Germany in the 1960s and 1970s to work but have stayed on and started families here.
Before 2014, their children had to give up either their parents’ citizenship or their German one by the age of 23.
The decision quickly drew a rebuke from the SPD, with Justice Minister Heiko Maas saying that reversing the rule “would be a step backwards for integration”.
SPD chief Sigmar Gabriel also derided the move, saying it showed the discord within the CDU.
“Either they have picked the wrong chairwoman or Madame Merkel has the wrong party,” he said.
The Green party’s parliamentary chief Anton Hofreiter accused the party of pandering to the conservative right with the new stance.
“The CDU is leaving the liberal middle ground and shifting right,” he told Die Welt daily.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Wednesday extended sanctions against Russia over doping until further notice.
The IOC first imposed sanctions on Russia in July in the wake of Richard McLaren’s report for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) that revealed a widespread state-backed scheme in Russia to rig drug tests at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and Paralympics.
The revelations led to the exclusion of more than 100 Russian athletes from the Rio Olympics and the entire Russian team from the Paralympics.
The IOC executive board “decided to extend the provisional measures … against Russia until further notice”, two days before the McLaren’s full report is released, in London.
“Once the above-mentioned process is complete, the IOC Executive Board will take all the appropriate measures and sanctions in the context of the Olympic Games, such as disqualification of athletes from competition at the Olympic Games, and the exclusion of implicated officials, entourage or government officials from the Olympic Games,” the board said in a statement.
“Outside the Olympic Games, the International Federations have the authority for any consequential sanctions of athletes and entourage from other international competitions, and potentially the suspension of national federations.”
The full report by Canadian law professor McLaren is again expected to lift the lid once more on doping in Russia.
“In order for the competent bodies, including the International Olympic Committee, to draw the relevant conclusions, due process now has to be followed,” the IOC board added.
“The evidence provided by Professor McLaren in his investigation has to be evaluated, and those implicated have to be given the right to be heard. This includes the athletes, the Russian Ministry of Sport, and other implicated persons and organisations.
“Once all the evidence has been considered, the IOC Executive Board will then issue the appropriate measures and sanctions related to the Olympic Games.”

Paris was smothered Wednesday by its worst winter pollution in a decade, with commuters enjoying free public transport and half of all cars ordered off the road to try to clear the air.
The surge in pollution has been driven by cold weather and near windless conditions that have trapped exhaust fumes, smoke from wood fires and other pollutants, according to the French capital’s AirParif air monitoring service.
Although bad by Paris standards, current levels of fine airborne particles, or PM10, are around 60 percent of those in Beijing and a fraction of readings in New Delhi, the world’s most polluted capital.
City authorities announced traffic restrictions would be extended to Thursday, with a ban imposed on private cars with registration plates ending in odd numbers from between 5:30 am (0430 GMT) and midnight.
The rule has been in place since Tuesday, alternating between odd and even plates.
Public transport in the city was free for a second day running Wednesday, to encourage commuters to leave their vehicles at home, while school children were prevented from exercising outside.
“It’s not the best time to be doing sport, that’s clear,” said David Ettinger, a 42-year-old teacher who uses the city’s Velib cycle-hire service.
Mohamed Navhit, 29, a tricycle rickshaw driver plying his trade outside the Louvre, said he had been struggling with the air quality.
As a smoker, he noticed the deterioration, he said.
“It feels like I’m smoking 10 cigarettes instead of one.”
“This is a record period (of pollution) for the last 10 years,” Karine Leger of AirParif told AFP.
For more than a week now, PM10 readings have been at dangerously high levels of over 80 microgrammes per cubic metre of air particles, reaching 146 microgrammes/m3 last Thursday.
Other parts of France are also being choked by smog.
Officials in the southeast Rhone valley region said they would introduce measures to restrict car use from Friday to combat the problem in the city of Lyon.
The Greens candidate in next year’s presidential election, Yannick Jadot, said politicians needed to target the most polluting vehicles and restrict the use of diesel engines.
“We have politicians who tell us they are looking after our health,” Jadot said. “The reality is that when they have to choose between traffic, diesel and our health, unfortunately they don’t choose our health.”
Measures are already in place to phase out diesel engines in buses in the capital.
This is only the fourth time Paris has resorted to traffic restrictions to cope with air pollution. The region’s officials took similar measures in 1997, 2014 and 2015.
A parliamentary report has questioned the efficacy of the restrictions, arguing that they do not target the most polluting vehicles.
On Tuesday, traffic police were kept busy trying to enforce the anti-pollution measures, fining more than 1,700 motorists for flouting the order to leave their car at home.
A power failure at one of the city’s main stations, the Gare du Nord, added to the transport pressures on Wednesday.
Trains to London, Brussels and Amsterdam came to a halt for several hours and intercity and local services were disrupted.
On Tuesday morning, the main rail link from central Paris to the city’s main airport, Charles de Gaulle, was knocked out of action after an accident brought down power lines.
State rail company SNCF said it hoped to have the line repaired by later Wednesday.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has told authorities investigating him over a rape allegation that his accuser “made it very clear” she wanted to have sex, according to testimony he released Wednesday.
His statements are the first he has made to investigators since taking refuge in Ecuador’s embassy in London over four years ago to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning in the matter.
He has said he fears Sweden would then hand him over to the United States to answer for the leaking of diplomatic cables and other classified documents by his whistleblowing website.
“I want people to know the truth about how abusive this process has been,” the 45-year-old Australian said in a statement he released with the testimony.
Swedish prosecutors dropped a sexual assault probe into Assange last year after the five-year statute of limitations expired.
But they are still investigating a 2010 rape allegation, which carries a 10-year statute of limitations.
An Ecuadoran prosecutor grilled him last month over the rape claim with questions supplied by Swedish prosecutors.
Assange told the prosecutor he met the woman who has accused him of rape at a 2010 talk in Stockholm, where he was based after WikiLeaks released 75,000 secret Pentagon documents about the war in Afghanistan.
The woman, known as SW in the documents, “appeared to be sympathetic to my plight and also appeared to be romantically interested in me”, adding that she invited him back to her home.
She “made it very clear that she wanted to have sexual intercourse with me,” he added. “During that night and again in the morning we had consensual sexual intercourse on four or five occasions.”
In a copy of her testimony seen by AFP, she said she woke up the next morning to find Assange having unprotected sex with her and decided to file a complaint after talking with friends.
Elisabeth Fritz, the lawyer for Assange’s alleged victim, said last month it was “time for this to go to trial” after six years of legal battles.
“We are expecting that the prosecutor will announce charges after this questioning and that these charges lead to a trial in a Swedish court,” she said.
WikiLeaks’s public profile dwindled while its mastermind remained holed up in the embassy.
But it recently returned to prominence with the leak of tens of thousands of emails from the US Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the final weeks of the race for the White House.
Assange denied influencing the shock election result and rejected claims he had links with Russia.

Dominic Ongwen could have escaped the clutches of Uganda’s notorious Lord’s Resistance Army rebels, but instead chose to stay because the “work was too nice”, his war crimes trial heard Wednesday.
On the second day of the trial at the International Criminal Court, a lawyer representing thousands of victims said Ongwen — a former child-soldier-turned warlord — scorned chances to leave the brutal rebel army led by Joseph Kony.
“Is Dominic Ongwen a victim or a criminal?” asked Francisco Cox, who represents some 2,600 out of more than 4,000 victims in the case before the court in The Hague.
Those communities affected by the LRA’s reign of terror — which lasted almost three decades and included murder, rape, pillage and the abduction of young children to serve as child soldiers or sex slaves — knew the answer, said Cox.
They said Ongwen “may have been abducted as a child, but when he became an adult he had the choice to leave but he did not — he found the ‘work’ too nice,” Cox told the judges.
Victims’ lawyer Paolina Massidda told the court that top LRA leaders like Ongwen often had the best pick of young girls which they then forcibly married and raped as part of a macabre reward system.
“Top commanders would describe the type of girl that they wanted including age, physical appearance and intelligence.”
“If recent abductees matched these desired characteristics… they were collected and distributed to the commanders,” she said.
At the opening of his trial on Tuesday, Ongwen denied 70 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the LRA’s terror campaign mainly directed against unarmed civilians living in refugee camps.
“In the name of God, I deny all these charges in respect to the war in northern Uganda,” Ongwen said.
He maintained he “was not the LRA”, but “one of the people who had crimes committed” against them.
But Cox said: “The victims are seeking justice. Only when Ongwen is put before a legal process will people become aware of what happened to them and will he become an example,” of the horrors they suffered.”
A self-styled mystic and prophet, the elusive Kony launched a bloody rebellion against Kampala some three decades ago seeking to impose his own version of the Ten Commandments on northern Uganda.
The UN says it has slaughtered more than 100,000 people and abducted 60,000 children since it was set up in 1987.
The case has now adjourned until mid-January, and the trial, during which 74 witnesses including former child soldiers will be called, is likely to last several years.
The defence says it is considering several arguments including that Ongwen is suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. His lawyers also maintain he was acting under duress.
Ongwen surrendered himself to US forces in 2015. But Kony remains at large with about 150 followers hiding out in the jungles of the Central African Republic.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Wednesday extended sanctions against Russia over doping until further notice.
The IOC first imposed sanctions on Russia in July in the wake of Richard McLaren’s report for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) that revealed widespread state-backed doping and led to the exclusion of hundreds of Russian athletes from the Rio Olympics.
The IOC executive board “decided to extend the provisional measures … against Russia until further notice”, two days before the McLaren’s full report is released, in London.

Spanish prosecutors have brought tax fraud charges against three former Real Madrid players, Xabi Alonso, Ricardo Carvalho and Angel di Maria and opened investigations into two other players, a prosecution source confirmed on Wednesday.
None of the cases are related to the “Football Leaks” scandal, which has accused a host of Madrid players, including three-time World Player of the Year Cristiano Ronaldo, of hiding income from image rights in tax havens in recent days.
Prosecution sources said the Spanish inland revenue has not provided them with any details over Ronaldo’s tax dealings.
Ronaldo has strongly denied any wrongdoing via his representatives Gestifute.
In February prosecutors presented charges on three counts of tax fraud amounting to three million euros ($3.2 million) against Bayern Munich midfielder Alonso between 2009 and 2011.
Argentine winger Di Maria is now at French champions Paris Saint-Germain, whilst 38-year-old veteran Carvalho was released by Monaco in August.
The identity of the other two players facing investigation was not revealed.
However, Spanish media reported Real defender Fabio Coentrao and Monaco striker Radamel Falcao, formerly of Atletico Madrid, are the two in question.
In a statement Madrid prosecutors insisted they “will always pursue infringements against the public coffers, whenever there is a crime.”

Convert your hard currency to Turkish lira and you could enjoy a free wedding package, a meal and a loaf of bread. Or even a gravestone.
These incentives are being offered by Turkish businessmen to customers who respond to a call from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to buy lira and prop up the ailing national currency.
His plea has met with a huge response — from kebab shop owners to the defence industry — although economists doubt the campaign will have any lasting impact.
Gokhan Kuk, a baker in Istanbul, told AFP he started offering free bread to those changing $250 into Turkish lira.
“With the help of God, we will raise the lira and annihilate the dollar,” he said, sitting in his office decorated with several portraits of Erdogan.
A few shops away, Bulent Baydeniz, who sells Turkish meat patties, offers a free meal for every $250 changed.
“After I heard the president of the republic, I understood that this could help the country.”
In the southeastern city of Gaziantep, businessman Fatih Demir is offering a free 5,000 lira ($1,460) wedding package if people prove they converted $10,000 into lira.
“We are doing this after the president’s call to give support for the lira to gain greater value,” Demir told AFP.
For those at the end of their life in the northwestern city of Bursa, Enes Alan says he is offering free gravestones worth 750 lira ($220) for those who convert $2,000.
But it is not just small business owners who are joining the campaign — Erdogan also urged shopping mall owners to pay rent in lira for the sake of patriotism.
The religious affairs agency said Turkish Muslims had to pay for pilgrimages in lira and the Istanbul Stock Exchange said its cash assets would be converted to the local currency.
The flow of patriotic conversions continued on Wednesday as the energy market’s regulatory authority said natural gas distribution tenders would be offered in lira.
And the government said its defence industry support fund had converted $262.7 million and 31.3 million euros into lira.
The drive has been propped up by a campaign on social media with the hashtag #doviziniturkiyeicinboz (Change your foreign currency for Turkey).
Economist Atilla Yesilada of consultancy Istanbul Analytics suggested the president’s call would have a limited impact on the lira because “the problem is Erdogan’s voters are usually from the lower income classes” unlikely to have much wealth to convert.
With richer Turks more likely to transfer assets abroad, “it’s not going to have a huge impact on our balance of payments or on the value of the currency”.
On Wednesday, the lira was trading at 3.42 to the dollar after rallying slightly this week. It had traded at 2.9 to the dollar at the start of the year.
With growth stuttering and the lira under pressure, Erdogan has turned preserving Turkey’s economic stability into a national struggle, like the defeat of the July coup.
“They are trying to stage a coup through interest rates, stock exchange and foreign currency transactions,” Erdogan said on Sunday.
He has repeatedly called for lower interest rates to boost Turkey’s growth, even though the central bank is theoretically independent.
In a speech in Ankara on Wednesday, he suggested there was “no difference” between Turkey’s fight against Islamic State jihadists in northern Syria and efforts to end foreign exchange speculation.
The president has previously said trade with Russia, China and Iran should be done in local currencies.
But Yesilada said they are “not a huge part” of Turkey’s trade thus any impact — even if they agreed — would not be “major”.
“Fifty percent of our trade is with the EU, that’s not going to change,” he said.
But he added that offering tenders in Turkish lira was a positive step.
“It’s a good idea to sell assets in Turkish lira and to contract tenders in lira. This is sensible.”
Turkey’s privatisation authority confirmed on Tuesday tenders would henceforth be offered in the local currency.

Masooma Hasani would be pelted with rocks whenever she went skiing, a sport considered unbecoming for girls in conservative Afghan society, but an unlikely ally helped change local attitudes: mullahs advocating women’s rights.
Skidding down the snow-blanketed slopes of Bamiyan, in central Afghanistan, 18-year-old Hasani for years suffered hostility and abuse from passing men unaccustomed to unveiled women dressed in figure-hugging ski suits.
“‘Girls don’t have the right to do sports. Girls are born to learn household chores such as cooking and cleaning.’ That’s what people would say,” Hasani told a rapt audience during a Kabul University event on Wednesday marking Human Rights Day.
“People would beat up my brothers and say our family was shameless to allow girls to ski. It made me cry.”
Hasani, diminutive but feisty, stood her ground. But what really helped her were Friday sermons of Bamiyan’s religious leaders who command respect and influence in local communities.
As part of a project to promote gender equality, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has trained more than 400 mullahs across Afghanistan to preach about women’s rights.
The sermons help bring awareness about the social and economic rights of women, and often include eye-opening conversations with men on subjects such as “how Islam encourages many sports”.
“Mullahs are some of the most powerful voices in Afghan communities — particularly in the more isolated areas where women suffer the greatest abuses,” UNDP Afghanistan country director Douglas Keh told AFP.
“By working with these key figures across Afghanistan, we have been able to promote the idea that men and women have equal rights.”
One of those trained to tackle hardened male attitudes is Mullah Abdul Rahman Redwani, director of Hajj and religious affairs in Bamiyan.
“Everybody can be literate or a teacher, lecturer, engineer, architect or doctor,” Redwani is seen in a UNDP video, sermonising in a mosque full of men.
“No matter whether they are a girl or boy, everyone must have opportunities both inside and outside the house.”
Masooma said that intervention had brought a sea change in local attitudes.
“Before I was mocked. Now I am welcomed by people who say they are proud of me,” she said.
“Now a lot of girls and women come out to watch us ski, which was hard to imagine just a few years ago.”
Afghan Women have made giant strides since the Taliban regime was ousted in 2001, but they are still so absent from public life that the social media hashtag #WhereAreTheWomen has gained traction in Afghanistan.
With many decades of conflict tearing the social fabric apart, women in Afghanistan continue to suffer high levels of violence, oppression and abuse, including forced marriages.
Bamiyan, however, in recent years has hosted several sporting competitions, most recently an international marathon last month -? Afghanistan’s only mixed-gender sporting event.
The events have become a metaphor of freedom in an Islamic country where any public sporting activity is widely seen as nothing short of a subversive act for women.
“My message to girls like Masooma is stay strong; keep the fight going; don’t be discouraged,” said UNDP’s Keh. “You are a model for women and girls not only in Afghanistan but throughout the world.”

Politicians have always been urged, begged and even beseeched to keep their eyes on the price but should always keep their ears firmly on the ground.
The deputy president, William Ruto is one of the most visible leaders today and even harbors presidential ambitions come 2022.
he actually considers himself quiet popular and flashes his charm every time he ascends on a political podium, crying, boosting, ridiculing or selling his manifesto to woo Kenyans to vote for him come 2022.
 
However there are areas in this country, where Ruto is deeply unpopular, so unpopular that the residents of these areas won’t hear none of the DP words, Ngo! Choosing to heckled the born again leader to silence.
Also read :
These are just a few areas William Ruto would only receive meagre votes.
This northern part of kenya is the latest to show its displeasure with Ruto. The Deputy President was on Monday heckled and booed by angry youth during his visit in Garissa County where he had gone to launch projects.

Ruto had hardly stood to speak than youth stated chanting the name of Mombasa Governor, Hassan Joho in a clear hit at Ruto who also wants to be President in 2022.
The youths took Jubilee shirts inscribed with the “Tuko Pamoja” slogan and tore them into pieces.
Any leader who wishes to be the president of Kenya, has to either win, rig, tamper, do anything in their power to win the vote rich basket of tharaka nithi. Ruto is not popular in this region currently following his remarks.
Angry residents went up in arms, following Ruto remarks which suggested that the government acknowledges Chuka town as the county’s headquarters instead of Kathwana, when he attended a fundraiser at Kaare Secondary School.
Carrying placards with CORD leader Raila Odinga’s image, the residents complained that the Jubilee government had abandoned the region, vowing to support Odinga in the 2017 election.
one of the protesters stated.
Tharaka Nithi has had with Jubilee empty promises and would rather sleep without chewing miraa than endure another jubilee ‘dry spell’
This is another region which William ruto is deeply unpopular. During the burial of former housing minister, Soita Shitanda Ruto was booed in the presence of president Uhuru during the burial ceremony.
According to Kakamega senator Boni Khalwale, Ruto was heckled by the crowd for “trying to counter” him in his home ground, Waza reported.
The secretary general of Central Organization of Trade Union, Francis Atwoli has accused Ruto of disrespecting the luhya community and vowed to  campaign against him in the land of Abaluhya.
The mulembe residents would rather be goored and trumped by their bulls than listen to Ruto
Despite this region being found in the rift valley, where the deputy president is perceived to be the kingpin and enjoys popular support.
The residents of green kericho begs to differ. During a consultative meeting held early this year Ruto received a hostile reception in Kericho, where South Rift leaders accused him of abandoning the region after Jubilee ascended to power.
During the Kericho By-election the Jubilee brigade and the deputy president were repeatedly booed. At Lelu Primary school where he had gone to campaign for JAP candidate for example, the crowd turned hostile and sang KANU songs raising the famous one finger salute chanting ‘jogoo’! Jogoo! Jogoo!
Police had difficult time controlling the surging crowds that forced the DP to take cover.
Kericho residents would rather drink sugarless tea with no milk than listen to another ‘Serikali imetega’ from Ruto
 
The coastal region of Mombasa is an opposition stronghold despite numerous attempts by the government to wrestle the vote rich turf from ODM, Mombasa governor, Hassan Joho is also a bitter rival of the DP and has repeatedly come out to launch
Also read :
Early this year when president Uhuru was in mombasa and Nairobi senator, Mike sonko stood on the podium and insulted Joho, hundreds of women the next day poured onto the streets of Mombasa and strongly condemned the ‘mannerless’ senator, it seem Ruto has not learnt from this lesson.
Furthermore Joho has vowed to face off with Ruto in the 2022 presidential race.
These polite folks of mombasa would prefer sitting on top of the sharp pointed apex of Mombasa tusks than listen to Ruto and jubilee foot soldiers insult their ‘sultan’

As the story goes, Olweny had gone to see his girlfriend and found her in the company of another man in bed.
Seeing that he had been betrayed, Olweny allegedly got into a fight with the man who was having intercourse with his girlfriend and Olweny got bitten. And the bite marks can still be seen on his body after the horrible fight.
Charles allegedly started carrying his property like a gas cylinder and woofer and that is when the lady started screaming ‘Mwizi! (Thief) alerting the neighbours.
This is according to friend Richard Osungu who posted this:
 
The neighbours then came out and beat Olweny so viciously that he sustained both external and internal injuries. Injuries that led to the death of the young man said to have been a Medical Sales Representative at Pan Pharmaceuticals Ltd , Nairobi, Kenya and a former student at Egerton University.
 
” his friend Osungu Richard said in a social media post.
But a woman who goes by the name Njeri wa Saddam says that this was not the case, Olweny was a thief:
Njeri’s account of the story has however been rubbished by Phoebe Mukii who wrote this in regards to the death of her friend:
Combined with Richard’s post, Phoebe’s account of the story has triggered backlash towards Njeri.  After receiving backlash on Kilimani mums and social media , she later changed her Facebook name to Kamamie Kamam so that she could post this:

But the women in Kilimani Mums did not buy her story, and went on to post this:
After these posts on social media questions are being raised on whether Olweny met his death after his girlfriend shouted ‘thief’ or whether he was a thief. But one thing that is common in the two accounts of the story is that Olweny was a victim of mob justice, cases of which have been on the rise.

Veteran British pilot Maurice Kirk has had his share of mishaps flying vintage planes around the world, but even his maverick mettle was tested after crashing in war-torn South Sudan.
Kirk, 71, was taking part in a rally flying vintage planes across Africa when he accidentally veered off course nearly two weeks ago, ending up in South Sudan instead of a town in Kenya just across the border.
It was the second time he went missing during the rally — whose exasperated organisers have disqualified him for his antics: flying with an unfit aircraft and broken compass, and forgetting all his maps in a Khartoum hotel.
Stricken with malaria in the South Sudanese capital Juba, Kirk told AFP how he crash-landed in Kapoeta — the site of violent clashes in July between warring parties in the country — shortly after all the pilots were detained in Ethiopia for two days.
“I was headed for Lokichogio (Kenya) and I simply ran out of daylight. I think I was suffering from malaria then and I had difficulties as a pilot-in-command. And I’m afraid I scratched her a little bit,” he said.
His rough landing left him with a puncture, broken propeller and other damage to his 1943 Piper Cub.
Kirk said he was “generally attacked” by locals when they stumbled upon him, slapping him around and herding him into the local police station.
“They put me into a cubbyhole with no water, no bucket. And they left the lights on and the flies were everywhere,” he said.
“They kept me there for four or five days… And every time the embassy rang, they would stand to attention with the phone and comb their hair,” he said.
Kirk has been recounting his adventures on his Facebook page, issuing desperate pleas to save his plane and get spare parts shipped to him, while detailing his severe nausea and headaches before he was transported to Juba and diagnosed with malaria.
“Malaria frightened me a lot,” said the pilot who was injured in 2005 when he crash-landed in Japan on a solo bid to fly around the world in a vintage plane. He also crashed in the Caribbean in 2008.
As he struggles to get a visa to legalise his presence in South Sudan, Kirk’s biggest fear is that his plane will be stripped by locals.
“I fear that because its upended, it’s an ideal slide for the local children. It’s very very old, it’s older than me.”
Sam Rutherford, organiser of the vintage plane rally which is expected to reach Cape Town in nine days, told AFP they were still trying to help Kirk despite his disqualification.
“Nothing can be done with the plane until he is fit ?- but it is likely to have been stripped before that happens… Very sad, but it’s not a good place to leave an aeroplane damaged and unattended.”
Despite his ordeal, Kirk says he is “besotted” with the countries he has visited in Africa.
While his maverick attitude angered many during the rally, he has plenty of fans on social media cheering him on and comparing him to adventurous aviators of old.
“Maurice Kirk is never lost, he is just occasionally uncertain of his current location. The man is a legend!” one friend wrote on his Facebook page.
Kirk, who dubs himself the Flying Vet for his days as a veterinarian, is a colourful character who parachuted into his own wedding and has also spent 20 years as a “chronic litigant” embroiled in dozens of court cases.
After sinking in the Caribbean, where he was saved by US coastguards, he landed on the Texas ranch of then US president George W. Bush in 2008 to deliver a letter of thanks, and was promptly arrested and placed in a psychiatric clinic.
After his experiences in South Sudan, Kirk is far from done with adventure.
Kirk said he plans to fly his plane “to Mexico, to President Trump’s wall” to ask permission to be allowed back in the United States.

A Pakistani plane carrying 48 people crashed Wednesday in the country’s mountainous north and burst into flames, authorities said, as rescue workers pulled dozens of bodies from the wreckage and officials expressed little hope for survivors.
Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) Flight PK661 came down on a flight from the city of Chitral to Islamabad, the civil aviation authority said.
It was not immediately clear what caused the crash, which occurred near the village of Saddha Batolni in Abbottabad district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The military, which was part of rescue operations, said 21 bodies had so far been retrieved from the wreckage.
“The way the plane crashed and broke into pieces, there is no chance of any survival,” Sardar Aurangzeb Nalota, a local legislator, told AFP.
Villagers were collecting body parts in shawls and on woven beds, he said, while police and rescue teams were searching the site with torches.
“The fuel tank is still on fire. the plane debris is scattered in the mountains and residents told me that it is completely destroyed,” Nalota said.
Ilyas Abbasi, a police official in the nearest town Havelian, said the site was more than four kilometres away over hilly terrain and had to be reached on foot.
The airline said the plane was an ATR-42 turboprop aircraft, which lost contact en route from Chitral.
“A plane has crashed and locals told us that it is on fire,” Saeed Wazir, a senior local police official, said earlier.
Among those on board was Junaid Jamshed, a former Pakistani pop star turned evangelical Muslim who was embroiled in a blasphemy controversy in 2014, according to the Chitral airport manager and a local police official.
The singer’s Twitter account had said he was in Chitral.
Tributes were pouring in on social media for the former lead singer of the country’s first major pop band, whose popular “Dil Dil Pakistan” became an unofficial national anthem.
“The voice of my youth, the voice of my generation…. #JunaidJamshed you will be sorely missed,” tweeted user Huma A Shah.
The terrain around Havelian is hilly, roughly the same altitude as the Margalla Hills which overlook Islamabad.
Pakistan’s most recent air disasters involved helicopters, both in 2015.
In May that year a Pakistani military helicopter crashed in a remote northern valley, killing eight people including the Norwegian, Philippine and Indonesian envoys and the wives of the Malaysian and Indonesian envoys.
In August 2015 another army helicopter crashed killing 12 people, all military.
The deadliest air disaster on Pakistani soil was in 2010, when an Airbus 321 operated by private airline Airblue and flying from Karachi crashed into the hills outside Islamabad while about to land, killing all 152 on board.
An official report blamed the accident on a confused captain and a hostile cockpit atmosphere.
But the deadliest accident involving PIA came when an Airbus A300 crashed into a cloud-covered hillside on approach to the Nepalese capital Kathmandu in 1992 after the plane descended too early, killing 167 people.
Despite this, PIA has been crash free for 10 years, and received a 7 out of 7 rating on the highly-cited AirlineRatings.com, which launched its annual listing in 2013.
But a 2014 analysis by US statistician Nate Silver based on data from 1985 – 2014, found the airline to have a consistently high number of what he termed “near-misses” — an indicator of risk.
Most of the carrier’s fleet apart from its latest Boeing 777s were also banned entry from the European Union between March and November 2007.

In Qayyarah, Iraqis are thronging a civil court to get married a second time, register births and replace the documents they were delivered during two years of jihadist administration.
“Do you take Ahmad as your lawful husband?”, the judge asked Salma in the civil court that recently reopened in Qayyarah, a town on the Tigris river south of the city of Mosul.
The young lady said yes, a year after exchanging vows before a Muslim cleric in Mosul, the large northern city where Iraqi forces are battling the Islamic State group.
The wedding certificate the couple was given then, complete with IS letterhead and stamps, is worthless in the eyes of Iraq’s federal administration.
The jihadist organisation, which controlled regions in Syria, swept through large parts of Iraq in 2014 and proclaimed a caliphate straddling both countries.
In an unprecedented move in modern jihad, the “caliphate” declared in Mosul was an experiment in statehood that saw an army of clerks and registrars run a parallel administration churning out millions of “official documents”.
Iraqi forces launched an operation to retake Mosul on October 17 and, as soon as they were able to flee, Ahmad and Salma came to the court in Qayyarah to officialise their union.
“We got married a year ago but I have documents delivered by IS and they are not recognised,” Ahmad told AFP after the ceremony.
“We wanted to come to this court to get this certificate before going to Baghdad,” he explained.
His young wife stood smiling quietly next to him, a black hijab framing her heavily made-up face.
They both refused to give their full names and asked not to be photographed, out of concern for the safety of relatives who remained in IS-held neighbourhoods of Mosul.
Seven weeks into Iraq’s largest military operation in years, anti-IS forces have barely retaken half of the city’s eastern side and hundreds of thousands of people remained under the jihadists’ yoke.
In front of the Qayyarah tribunal, which re-opened in mid-November after Iraqi forces retook the town from IS this summer, dozens of people were queueing up.
Some wanted to repeat their wedding vows, others to register the birth of their children.
Abdel Aziz Ibrahim, a 25-year-old from Qayyarah, was among them and explained he wanted to officialise his caliphate-era marriage with the now reinstated federal authorities.
“I came to have my marriage registered,” the young man said, adding that he also hoped to “obtain a birth certificate for my son Hamza, who was born under Daesh (IS) control”.
Meanwhile, at more than two years of age, little Ahmad’s legal existence was about to begin.
He entered with his family, who were accompanied by two witnesses to sign the boy’s birth certificate.
“Ahmed was born in August 2014, two months after Daesh entered our town,” his mother Hamda Mahmud said, holding her son who wore a thick jacket and woolly hat.
“We didn’t even try to get a birth certificate at the time because we knew that Daesh courts would never be recognised. So we waited,” she said. “Daesh hurt us so much.”
Inside the busy courtroom, the judge tried to reassert his authority after two and a half years of jihadist rule marked by the law of terror and the strictest interpretation of sharia.
“We have law degrees in here,” he said.
Tareq al-Juburi, one of the lawyers working in Qayyarah, told AFP outside the court: “Marriage, birth and death records just froze in courts located in areas under Daesh’s control.”
“Now that some of these areas are being liberated, the people are taking steps” to obtain official documents, he explained.
Not all the people lining up in the frosty morning outside the Qayyarah court were seeking to replace IS-issued documents.
Serhan Matar, 56, said he had come to obtain a death certificate for his son, “a policeman killed by Daesh when the jihadists entered Qayyarah”.
He said he also wanted to ask for compensation money for his daughter-in-law and his son’s children, as well as “file a complaint against Daesh”.

If you ask anyone who are the richest people in history, the most obvious answer will be King Solomon, Bill Gates, and then maybe banking families and businessmen in Europe.
Most people in Africa and elsewhere will not give a chance to an African to make the list of the top 25 richest people in the history of the world.
A large part of this is down to colonialism with many records and evidence of African culture either shipped abroad of methodically destroyed to destroy the pride, culture and identity of many African communities.
The idea of Africans being inferior to Europeans was so perpetuated that even now unless for a lover of history few can appreciate and understand just how far ahead Africans were at a time when many Europeans were battling disease and famine in their kingdoms.
Celebrity Net worth compiled a list of the 25 richest people in history factoring in inflation.
The list uses the annual 2199.6 per cent rate of inflation to adjust historic fortunes – a formula that means $100 million in 1913 would be equal to £2.299.63 billion today.
According to the list here are the top 10 richest people in the history of the world
As celebrity net worth reports,
‘After his death in 2011, reports surfaced that Muammar Gaddafi was secretly the wealthiest person in the world with a net worth of $200 billion. In the months surrounding his death nearly $70 billion in cash was seized in foreign bank accounts and real estate’
The Times describe Mansa Keita Musa I as being as rich beyond description. He was the tenth king of the Mali empire from 1312-1337.
It was during his trip to Mecca that the outside word knew about him and made records about his vast wealth and prestige. 
He ruled all (or parts) of modern day Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Chad. He supplied about half of the world’s salt and Gold.
 
In his trip to Mecca, he would gift the cities he passed through and gave the poor in Egypt so much gold that the price of the metal was devalued for the next 10 years in Egypt.
He was forced on his trip to borrow back much of the gold from dealers to try and rectify the gold market. Mansa Musa built mosques and education centers including a university at Timbuktu where some of the leading scholars from Africa and Arabia resided.

More than 30 people were missing off the Yemeni island of Socotra on Wednesday after a cargo vessel carrying islanders home from the mainland sank in the Indian Ocean, authorities said.
At least 26 passengers were rescued from the water after a major search operation in the early hours, President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi said in a statement on the official sabanew.net website.
The ship sank northwest of Socotra — around 350 kilometres (220 miles) from Yemen’s south coast — which has been hit by rare tropical cyclones in recent months.
Hadi called for “doubling efforts to broaden rescue operations to reduce the scope of the catastrophe that has struck the inhabitants of Socotra.”
Officials declined to say if inclement weather was behind the disaster but Yemeni Fisheries Minister Fahd Kavieen earlier told reporters that the vessel had “an accident.”
“Sixty people, including women and children, were aboard the vessel, which was also carrying small fishing boats,” he said.
The government said United Arab Emirates jets were assisting search and rescue operations alongside Yemeni coastguards as well as two ships from Australia and Austria.
It did not specify whether those vessels were merchant ships or part of an international flotilla that has been fighting piracy off the nearby Somali coast.
Although long ruled from Yemen, Socotra lies closer to the coast of Africa than it does to the Arabian Peninsula.
It sits at the exit of a busy shipping lane from the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean.
For years it was prey to piracy from the lawless Somali coast and it is in one of the most heavily patrolled maritime areas on Earth.
Kavieen did not specify whether warships of the international counter-piracy operation were taking part in the search for survivors.
He said that the ship had been out of contact for several days and its sinking was confirmed on Tuesday.
“Vessels have been combing the area since the early hours and there is significant hope that the passengers have survived,” he said.
Yemen has been ravaged by conflict for the past two years, disrupting transport links to the archipelago.
The port of Mukalla, from which the sunken freighter set off, was controlled by Al-Qaeda for a full year until it was retaken by pro-government forces in April.
Air links to Socotra from elsewhere in Yemen have all but ground to a halt as Hadi’s beleaguered government battles rebels who still control the capital Sanaa.
There are no regular passenger ferries either, forcing islanders to seek berths on the occasional cargo vessel.
Throughout the devastating conflict that has pitted forces supporting Hadi against Shiite rebels and their allies, Socotra has remained loyal to his Saudi-backed government and has been spared the violence gripping much of Yemen.
Socotra has enormous tourism potential which has never been realised because of the repeated conflicts suffered by Yemen.
Its isolation from the landmasses of both Africa and Asia has led to the evolution of unique plant life, much of it found nowhere else on Earth.
Among the most famous is the dragon’s blood tree, a bizarre umbrella-shaped plant that earned its name from its blood-red sap which was much sought after as a dye in the ancient world.
Persistent unrest in the nearby Horn of Africa has meant that the waters around Socotra have seen a steady flow of Ethiopian and Somali migrants ready to risk the perilous sea crossing in the hope of reaching Yemen’s energy-rich Gulf neighbours.
At least 79 people have perished while attempting to cross the Gulf of Aden this year, the UN refugee agency has said.

Ukraine’s main plane maker told US President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday that he may want to purchase one of its jets after he called Boeing’s version of Air Force One too costly.
The suggestion was made in clear jest on the Antonov company’s Twitter account.
“@realDonaldTrump May be it is better to consider #Antonov aircraft as Air Force One?” the plane maker asked.
Trump tweeted on Tuesday that “Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!”
Boeing later explained that no such contract existed and that it had only received $170 million from the White House “to determine the capabilities” of a new presidential fleet.
Antonov may best be known for being the maker of the Mriya — the world’s largest cargo jet.
Former Soviet Ukraine is a strong US ally but is also concerned by Trump’s recent praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Kiev blames the Kremlin for plotting and backing a 31-month pro-Russian separatist war in the east of Ukraine that has claimed nearly 10,000 lives and plunged Moscow’s relations with the West to a post-Cold War low.

Prosecutors urged UN judges on Wednesday to jail Ratko Mladic for life, accusing the former Serb commander of a ruthless campaign of ethnic cleansing to create a Greater Serbia in the 1990s Balkans wars.
“It would be… an insult to the victims, living and dead, and an affront to justice to impose any sentence other than the most severe available one: a life sentence,” prosecutor Alan Tieger told the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
“The time has come for General Mladic to be held accountable for those crimes against each of his victims and the communities he destroyed.”
Once dubbed “the Butcher of Bosnia”, Mladic, 74, has denied 11 charges including two of genocide, as well as war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the bloody 1992-95 Bosnian conflict.
More than 100,000 people died and 2.2 million others were left homeless in what prosecutors say was a relentless campaign aimed at chasing all non-Serbs from Bosnian territory with the aim of creating a Greater Serbia.
After living openly in Serbia despite an international arrest warrant against him, Mladic was finally captured in 2011 after 16 years on the run. His trial opened in May 2012.
During three days of closing arguments, prosecutors brushed aside defence claims that Mladic, as the commander of Serbian forces, only had a limited role in the Bosnian conflict maintaining he was the man “who was in charge, who called the shots.”
“His concern was not that Muslims might create a state, his concern was to have them vanish completely,” Tieger told judges on Monday.
The defence team will now open three days of closing arguments on Friday and into next week. A verdict and judgement is not expected until some time in 2017.
Mladic is notably accused of being behind the punishing 44-month siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, which claimed an estimated 10,000 lives in a relentless campaign of shelling and sniping.
UN prosecutors on Tuesday described harrowing scenes of rape and murder as they also sought an unprecedented conviction for genocide in Bosnian towns.
So far in the history of the ICTY, set up in 1995 in The Hague at the height of the wars, the tribunal has only recognised as “genocide” the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys.
Mladic, whose trial is the last before the ICTY, also stands accused of genocide for his role in the killings in Srebrenica, Europe’s worst bloodshed since World War II.
“Srebrenica has been a catastrophe for the Muslim community of eastern Bosnia, a tragedy of such proportions that my words here today cannot begin to convey to you the suffering experienced by the people of Srebrenica,” another prosecutor, Peter McCloskey, told the tribunal on Wednesday.
“But the greatest tragedy is no longer found in the dead, for their suffering is over. We must also remember the families left behind,” he said.
“There is too much pain, there is too much loss for any of us to truly comprehend the nature and scope of the shared misery of the women and survivors of the Srebrenica community.”
Six people, including former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, have been found guilty of genocide at Srebrenica — Europe’s worst bloodshed since World War II.
But to the dismay of victims, judges have so far ruled that there was insufficient evidence in any of the trials to prove that genocide was committed in seven other municipalities.
Karadzic, sentenced to 40 years in March, and Mladic remain the highest-profile actors from the wars to see their trials completed after former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic died in his UN detention cell in 2006.

The 52 year old man identified as Dolph Gichuhi apparently arrived home drunk before he picked a fight with his wife. The neighbors who are already used to his ways however did not get involved until 2AM when they realized he had locked himself in the burning house.
 
The late Mr Dolph Gichuhi’s wife revealed that her husband was fond of beating her up and this time around he was aiming of killing her in the house by burning it down.
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However, efforts of trying to rescue the man bore no fruits as he was found burnt to death on his bed.
This is just one of the many cases of domestic violence witnessed this year.
There have been different cases of wives being hospitalized after being in abusive relationships, however  with all the counseling, they end up staying.
 

Time magazine on Wednesday named Donald Trump its “Person of the Year” for 2016 for his stunning upset election victory that rewrote the rules of politics, delivering him to the helm of a divided America.
The president-elect dialed into NBC television’s Today show, welcoming the accolade as a “very, very great honor,” denying he was responsible for divisions and praising outgoing Democratic President Barack Obama.
The real estate tycoon, who has never previously held elected office and shocked the political establishment by defeating his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, is featured on Time’s cover described as “Donald Trump: President of the Divided States of America.”
The magazine said its person of the year, a tradition that began in 1927, “had the greatest influence, for better or worse, on the events of the year.”
“So which is it this year: better or worse?” editor-in-chief Nancy Gibbs wrote. “The challenge for Donald Trump is how profoundly the country disagrees about the answer.”
She said 2016 had been the year of his rise and 2017 would be the year of his rule, after he is sworn into office on January 20.
“Like all newly elected leaders, he has a chance to fulfill promises and defy expectations,” said Gibbs.
Trump won the title, she added, for “reminding America that demagoguery feeds on despair and that truth is only as powerful as the trust in those who speak it, for empowering a hidden electorate by mainstreaming its furies and live-streaming its fears, and for framing tomorrow’s political culture by demolishing yesterday’s.”
In the past Time has showed its editorial teeth by naming sinister figures — Adolf Hitler in 1938 and Joseph Stalin both in 1939 and 1942.
The president-elect told NBC’s Today show that he thought the sub-heading on the front cover about a divided America was “snarky” and denied that it was his fault.
“I’m not president yet so I didn’t do anything to divide,” he said, despite having inflamed the country by campaign rhetoric disparaging women, illegal immigrants and Muslims among others.
For years he criticized Obama and was instrumental in the so-called “birther” movement that questioned whether the first black president was born in the United States.
“I will say this: I’ve now gotten to know President Obama, I really like him,” Trump told NBC on Wednesday. “I can’t speak for him, but we have a really good chemistry together. We talked,” he said.
“He loves the country, he wants to do right by the country and for the country and I will tell you, we obviously very much disagree on certain policies and certain things, but I really like him,” he added.
The billionaire even said that he discussed some of his possible appointments with the outgoing Democratic president.
“I take his recommendations very seriously and there are some people that I will be appointing and in one case have appointed where he thought very highly of that person,” Trump said.
Clinton, the former secretary of state who became the closest in history to becoming America’s first female commander in chief, was named the runner-up, with computer hackers in third place.
The former first lady won the popular vote with around 2.7 million more votes than Trump, but the Republican won the crucial Electoral College by 306 to 232.
Trump campaigned hard on a promise of bringing back jobs with the old manufacturing heartland hard hit by companies fleeing overseas and taking jobs to cheaper labor markets in China or Mexico.
Trump told Time in an interview that he asked Apple CEO Tim Cook to build in the United States “a great plant, your biggest and your best, even if it’s only a foot by a foot bigger than some place in China.”
He also addressed representing working class Americans despite his lavish wealth, living in a luxurious Manhattan penthouse.
“I’m sitting in an apartment the likes of which nobody’s ever seen. And yet I represent the workers of the world. And they love me and I love them,” he told the magazine.
“I think people aspire to do things. And they aspire to watch people. I don’t think they want to see the president carrying his luggage out of Air Force One. And that’s pretty much the way it is,” he said.

Jubilee Members of the County Assembly (MCAs) have called for to be investigated over claims of Sh20 billion which was said to be unaccounted for according to a report by the Auditor General.
The MCAs led by Minority Leader Abdi Guyo said that the report was credible and should not be trashed and be thoroughly investigated.
The MCAs now want the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Anti-banking Fraud Unit to move urgently and investigate the scandal, failure to which they will urge the President to consider invoking article 192 that says the President may suspend a county government in exceptional circumstances.
However, Kidero has rubbished the 2014/2015 Auditor-General’s report on the county, saying it was impractical to misappropriate Sh20 billion.
He dismissed the report as impractical saying that said the county’s operations would have been paralysed had the money been stolen.
 
Kidero said.
However,  Guyo said the Sh20 billion was accumulated from the 2013/14 budget to date, hence it was not impractical as claimed by Dr Kidero.
He said in the 2014/15 budget, the assembly passed Sh29.9 billion budget and only Sh8 billion was spent as recurrent expenditure and called for the accounting of the rest of the money.
said Mr Guyo.

Dark matter, the mysterious substance believed to comprise a quarter of our Universe, is spread out more smoothly than previously thought, said a study Wednesday that may challenge some tenets of physics.
The finding may throw into question what little we know about the birth and growth of the cosmos, astronomers reported.
“All we can say for now is that something appears to be not quite right,” study co-author Konrad Kuijken of the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands told AFP.
Studying the light of some 15 million distant galaxies with Europe’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, Kuijken and a team found dark matter to be significantly “less clumpy” than previously shown by the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite.
Dark matter is a mysterious substance not visible to telescopes and perceived only through its gravitational pull on other objects in the Universe.
Planck, retired in 2013, studied radiation remnants from the “Big Bang” that created the Universe some 14 billion years ago.
The new study, in turn, examined how the light from distant galaxies is bent through the gravitational influence of matter.
“The surprise result… has implications for our understanding of the Universe, and how it has evolved during its almost 14-billion-year history,” the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) and the European Southern Observatory, which hosts the VLT, said in a statement.
“Such an apparent disagreement with previously established results from Planck means that astronomers may now have to reformulate their understanding of some fundamental aspects of the development of the Universe.”
This could mean rethinking the very essence of dark energy — an unexplained force thought responsible for accelerating the expansion of the Universe.
Instead of the single “cosmological constant” suggested by Albert Einstein, there could be several different forms of dark energy, said Kuijken.
“Another exciting possibility is that this is a sign that the laws of gravity on the scale of the Universe are different from general relativity” — Einstein’s gravity theory which underpins much of physics today.
The results were published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The Planck satellite in 2013 reshaped our understanding of the Universe’s key ingredients.
It found that “normal matter” — which makes up human beings, planets, stars and galaxies — comprises 4.9 percent of the Universe, up from 4.5 percent previously measured.
Dark matter makes up significantly more than thought — 26.8 percent of the Universe in total. Dark energy accounts for the rest at 68.3 percent.

Egypt has an ambitious three-year reform plan that, with foreign help, can revive its struggling economy, the minister of international cooperation told AFP.
In an interview, Sahar Nasr said the “three-year strategy” will lead to a return of investments, boost industrial production and create jobs.
It comes as Egypt faces not only falling growth and a currency crisis following years of political turmoil, but also increasing public discontent over rising prices.
“Once these reforms are all in place, there will be a positive impact on the economy, and on the social front,” Nasr said. “Especially in the medium and long term.”
The economy of Egypt, the most populous Arab country, has faced major challenges since the 2011 ouster of longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who took power after the 2013 overthrow of his Islamist predecessor Mohamed Morsi, has vowed to get the economy back on track.
His government has sought help abroad and on November 11 the International Monetary Fund approved a $12 billion loan to Egypt over the next three years.
The country will also benefit from the release of the first tranche of a $1 billion World Bank loan and the deposit by the African Development Bank of the first tranche of a $1.5 billion loan. Cairo is also finalising an $800 million loan with the European Union.
Nasr said the aid programmes are helpful but will provide only temporary support.
Donors are “helping Egypt to stand on solid ground, helping Egypt not to rely on foreign aid, and not to rely on any borrowing from international financial institutions” in the long run, she said.
The international aid is “to improve Egyptians’ living standards”, she said, in a country where 27.8 percent live below the poverty line and public debt is nearing 100 percent of Gross Domestic Product.
The goal is a return to sustainable economic growth of six percent by 2018, compared with 3.5 percent in the first half of this year.
The government’s reform plan is based on “three pillars”, Nasr said.
The first is to boost private sector investment.
“The key of the reform programme is improving the business environment, encouraging industrialisation, and also promoting exports,” she said.
The second is restructuring the budget, including by cutting subsidies, which represent 7.9 percent of government spending.
“On social housing, subsidies were initially going to the developers and we moved from this supply side to the demand side, so that subsidies would be effectively targeted to the low-income or middle-income households in a very transparent and effective manner,” Nasr said.
The third pillar is monetary reform, she said, describing it as “a major step in terms of economic stability”.
Egypt floated its currency on November 3, which was followed by a devaluation from the fixed rate of 8.8 pounds per dollar to a traded rate of 18 pounds per dollar last week.
Nasr said the planned reforms had been “delayed for decades”.
International assistance could also be directed at specific areas of the economy, she said, pointing to the energy sector.
The Egyptian energy sector is undergoing “political reform,” Nasr said, with the country taking its first steps towards renewable energy with wind and solar power projects.
Asked if foreign aid could represent an additional burden for public finances, Nasr said the government is “monitoring very carefully and we are watching our external debt”.
“Before finalising any deal, we make sure that the project is repayable.”

Sri Lankan cricket legend Arjuna Ranatunga Wednesday abandoned a bid to build a record-breaking 100-metre tall Christmas tree after the head of the Catholic church on the island called it a waste of money.
Ranatunga, who led Sri Lanka to victory in the 1996 World Cup, had been at the forefront of the project to first raise the money and then erect a 325-foot artificial tree in central Colombo.
However Ranatunga had to beat a retreat after the Archbishop of Colombo Malcolm Ranjith said the scheme was “wasteful expenditure” and the money would have been better spent on helping the poor.
“In deference to the wishes of the archbishop, I have ordered a stop to the construction of this tree,” Ranatunga, who is now a government minister, said in a brief statement.
The 53-year-old, who represents a largely Catholic parliamentary constituency, had recently laid the steel base of the tree which was beginning to take shape on Colombo’s Galle Face beachfront promenade.
Ranatunga had said that it would be the tallest artificial Christmas tree ever built anywhere in the world.
According to Guinness World Records, the largest artificial Christmas tree was erected in the southern Chinese province of Guangzhou last year, measuring around 55 metres.
A team in Mexico claimed to have erected a 90-metre tree in 2009.
Last year Sri Lanka’s Catholic church urged priests not to put up Christmas trees in their churches over the festive period, with Cardinal Ranjith saying they had no religious significance.
Sri Lanka is a mainly Buddhist country but around 1.2 million of its population of 21 million are Catholics.
December 25 is a national holiday and shops and streets are often lavishly decked out with Christmas decorations and lights.

Justin Rose on Wednesday said he had been close to pulling out of this week’s Hong Kong Open title defence after a back injury laid him low.
The Olympic champion was in doubt after the injury forced him to abandon last week’s Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas after just one round.
It was the 36-year-old Englishman’s only competitive round of golf in two months, after he took a break to rest an ongoing back complaint.
“Sure, I’ve been worried about my participation the last few days,” Rose told reporters. “Making the trip was 50-50 at one point last week.”
He added: “It’s not ideal to come in here slightly undercooked preparation-wise but I’m hoping that the fact that I’ve been diligent and careful the last few days is going to allow me to be competitive for all four days.”
Rose said his driving could be affected by his back condition, but he was hopeful the relatively short Fanling course would work in his favour.
“You know, you never really forget how to compete,” he said. “This is a golf course I’ve played enough now to be able to see it blind this week, so to speak.”
Rose isn’t the only player with fitness concerns in Hong Kong, which opens the European Tour’s 2017 season and concludes the Asian Tour schedule for 2016.
Masters champion Danny Willett is coming off a two-week break to recover from a bad back and 2010 winner Ian Poulter returned from five months out in October.
England’s Willett, 29, skipped the World Cup in Melbourne and the British Masters to rest his back, but he said his recovery remained a “work in progress”.
“I don’t think there are many guys who could say they are 100 percent all the time, purely because of how much travel we do, sleeping in different beds and trying to play a sport that doesn’t quite fit with the natural movement in the body,” he said.
Poulter, 40, made a last-minute dash to Hong Kong from his home in Florida last year when he realised his European Tour membership was about to lapse.
He has had a less frenetic build-up to this year’s event — but said his long lay-off had left him a little “rusty”, especially with his putting.
One leading player who is injury-free is the big-hitting American Patrick Reed, 26, who tied for third last year at the venerable Fanling course.
Reed said the USA’s Ryder Cup victory in October would add extra spice to exchanges with his European rivals when they tee off on Thursday.
“The US side is a little more vocal this year!” he said. “It was in desperate need for the US to win this past year, it had been so one-sided, we needed to get that spark back.”
Australia’s Scott Hend is expected to seal the Asian Tour’s order of merit title, while Spain’s Miguel Angel Jimenez is seeking a fifth victory in Hong Kong.

India suffered a blow on the eve of the fourth Test against England Wednesday when batsman Ajinkya Rahane suffered an injury in training that ruled him out of the series.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India said the vice-captain had fractured a finger after being struck by the ball during a practice session at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium.
“(Rahane) has been ruled out for the remaining two Test matches,” the BCCI said in a late afternoon statement, adding that the 28-year-old had been replaced by right-hander Manish Pandey.
Captain Virat Kohli had announced better news on the injury front earlier in the day when he said Lokesh Rahul had recovered from a hamstring problem and would open the batting alongside Murali Vijay.
But he said it was unlikely that fast bowler Mohammed Shami whose figures of 5-100 fired India to a massive eight-wicket win over England in the third Test would be risked.
“We have got to take a call in the evening in terms of how he’s feeling with his knee,” Kohli told reporters.
“After the Mohali Test I think he felt a bit of soreness in his knee so we need to take a corrective call on that because he has a history of knee surgery.
“We don?t want to push a player to an extent where we lose him for the whole season,” the captain added of Shami, who previously missed 15 months of action following an operation on his knee.
Medium pacer Shardul Thakur is on standby, the BCCI said.
India lead the series 2-0 and can clinch the five-match rubber with a game to spare if they avoid defeat in Mumbai.

Earwax is in place to protect the ear canal from bacteria, and fungi, insects and water. external agents but sometimes there is a blockage and that becomes a problem. Accumulation of excessive earwax could result in earache, feeling of fullness in the ear, an uncomfortable sensation in the ear, noises in the ear, temporary hearing loss and itching and so on which are always uncomfortable.
Hence we use the ear buds, but not all of us like the ear buds, so here are some home remedies you can use to help remove the wax
 
Salt water is the best removal solution that can be used at home. It can soften the wax accumulated inside the ear, making it easy to get rid of.
1. Mix one teaspoon of salt in one-half cup of warm water until the salt dissolves completely.
2. Soak a cotton ball in the saline solution.
3. Tilt the affected ear up toward the sky. Squeeze the cotton ball to put a few drops of the saline water into the ear.
4. Stay in the same position for three to five minutes.
5. Next, tilt your head in the opposite direction to allow the saline water to drain out.
6. Clean the outer part of your ear with a clean cloth to remove the softened wax.
Warm water will also help get rid of excess earwax. The gentle force of the water will dislodge the wax, making it easier to remove.
1. Pour little warm water in the affected ear.  (body temperature).
2. Tilt your head upright and pull the outer ear to straighten the ear canal.
3. Leave it for a few seconds.
4 Drain it out by tilting your head to the opposite side.
Use only clean water.
 
To soften earwax and facilitate its removal, you can also use baby oil.
1. Put few drops of baby oil/glycerin with the help of a
2. Tilt the affected ear toward the sky and put two to five drops of the baby oil into the ear.
3. Place a cotton ball at the ear opening to prevent oil from oozing out.
4. Leave it for several minutes.
5. Remove the cotton ball and tilt your head the opposite direction to drain out the extra oil.
6. Clean the ear opening with a clean cloth.

Others went on to cruelly mock her calling her barren and saying that her inability to bear children is the reason Diamond left her.
Word which hurt Wema very badly and she responded with this:
Now that Zari has borne a child for Diamond, Wema is once again under attack. Sharing photos of the gorgeous McClure twins frequently also seems to have fired up Wema’s haters and they had very unkind words for the Bongo Star.
 

The things comedians do in the name of making fun could be really offensive to some people if they are taken literally. But mostly comedians mean no harm with their gimmicks, they only intend to attract public attention and make them find a reason to laugh.
But things do not always work as per their expectations; only a few days ago angry Kenyans were baying for Eric Omondi’s blood after the comedian was seen crucified on a cross.
Eric did a rendition of Sauti Sol’s “Kuliko Jana” but things turned out to be completely ugly as his intention was misunderstood.
Religious zealots called for tough actions against Omondi because his action was interpreted as sheer blasphemy to their faces.
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And now Sleepy David has also done something that could offend some people; he has thrown  major shade at Sauti Sol’s Aime Baraza and Citizen TV presenter, Willis Raburu.
The Churchill Show comedian hit the two under the belt as he exposed their not-so-desirable characteristics.
In a video recording, Sleepy insinuated that Bien was such a diva that he sprays himself with a perfume even when he is taking a nap.
And for Willis Raburu, the mischievous comedian claimed that the 10 over 10 host farts loudly in his sleep.
Sleepy David captioned his video after posting it on social media.
Watch the video below
 

Sleepy’s gimmick was however intended to give his audience a scoop of what they should expect on 18th of December as he hosts a comedy show at Aboretum Gardens.

Fourteen patients have been locked up inside hospital wards at the Kabarnet County Hospital, Baringo County.
The patients have not received medical attention ever since the .
However, they have not been allowed to leave the hospital over unpaid bills.
Some of them have been at the hospital for two months.
one of the patients said.
Chepurai Lomotepa, a Koloa resident whose legs are heavily bandaged following an infection, has been in the hospital for two months and her left knee has been operated on four times.
 
Unlike other patients, she has not been visited by any relatives and was brought in by a good Samaritan.
She however cannot leave the hospital until she has cleared her bill after the order from the hospital management.
Their relatives have been forced to buy them painkillers from nearby clinics.
Another patient, has been surviving on painkillers as she nurses a wound that is undressed after failing to clear her bill of Sh40, 000.
At least 14 patients have died across the country as the strike by Kenya’s health workers began on Monday.
 as doctors and nurses made good their threat to go on strike.
In Western and Nyanza regions, relatives of patients had to dress their patients’ wounds or pay some nurses between Sh300-Sh400 to have them clean the wounds.

In September 2016 globally acclaimed Whiskey Brand Chivas launched the 3rd year of The Venture .
This is a $1Million competition supporting the most promising aspiring social entrepreneurs in Kenya who want to succeed while making a positive impact on the lives of others.
The launch of Chivas – The Venture follows a global report that revealed 95% of young professionals are looking for businesses to take more responsibility in solving global problems.
Since Chivas – The Venture first launched in 2014, over 3,500 social enterprises have applied for the chance to receive a share of the annual $1 million fund.
Kenya’s very own WEFARM, a farming information platform came 2nd at last year’s finals, and secured $200,000 for their social enterprise.
Chivas Regal has completed the selection of the judges who will oversee the Kenyan chapter of the global competition dubbed The Venture.
The Venture is Chivas’ global search to find and support the next generation of startups that want to succeed whilst making a positive impact on the lives of others.
The panel of judges, as selected by Chivas Regal and partnering agencies, will evaluate the applications submitted by aspiring social entrepreneurs and select the deserving social entrepreneurs to then proceed to the finals of the competition to be held in New York.
“The entrepreneurs will have to prove to the judges that their initiative will be the most sustainable and will hold the most significant social impact on the societies. These judges are well recognized in their fields and will hold the key success for the budding entrepreneurs,” added Chivas Brand Manager, Dorcas Njoroge.
The panel consists of seven judges who are well-known investors, venture capitalists and respected members of the social entrepreneurial space in Kenya.
The judges include; Aaron Fu, a managing partner at NEST a Venture capital firm with the head office in Hong Kong;
Sarah Kabira, an engineer and entrepreneur who has worked for big telecommunications companies such as Safaricom and Vodacom UK.
Esther Ndeti who runs ANDE which is a global network of organizations that support entrepreneurship in emerging markets,
Mikul Shah, an entrepreneur with over 10 years’ experience, founder and Managing Director of Eat Out Kenya, Yummy Magazine and the Nairobi Restaurant Week;
Roy Wachira, a serial entrepreneur who runs among other companies the Foundry Africa;
Ivan Mbowa, CEO and Co-Founder of Umati Capital, with vast experience in investment banking and finally Jessica Colaco, a TED fellow and co-founder of Brave Venture Labs-East Africa’s first Network Science lab based in Nairobi and San Francisco.
The Venture seeks to provide support to the next generation of startups whose aim is to succeed while positively impacting on the lives of others.
Since the Venture Launch in 2014 over 3,500 entrepreneurs have applied to take part in this competition whose grand prize is set at 1 million dollars for the final winner.
 
This year, Kenya will be part of the 32 countries across six continents who will be participating and only the most promising participants from each of the countries will proceed to New York for the final event in July 2017.
The Venture application closed on November 30th and is currently under-review with the selected judges. The Kenyan winner will be announced January 12th, 2017.
 
 

Yulia Mikhailova considers herself lucky after surviving a shell strike on a trolley last year that killed 15 people in war-scarred east Ukraine’s pro-Russian rebel-held territory.
But the 25-year-old lost a leg and an arm and can now only get about with a wheelchair or the help of friends due to a lack of modern prosthetics that allow a person independent use of their artificial limbs in the rebel bastion of Donetsk.
“After the attack, I saw parts of my body lying around and I lost a lot of blood,” Mikhailova told AFP.
“I was lucky — at least the intensive care unit had medicine delivered through foreign humanitarian aid.”
The United Nations estimates that nearly 10,000 people have been killed and more than 22,000 wounded after 31 months of fighting between pro-Western government forces and Moscow-inspired rebel militias in the European Union’s backyard.
The wounded are often left helpless: the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk does not manufacture artificial limbs and has to import them instead from Germany via Russia.
After a year Mikhailova finally got an artificial leg, but the lack of pain killers and proper medical guidance mean she rarely uses it and has to rely on a wheelchair or her family’s help.
“In order to walk on your own, you need a better prosthetic to replace the standard one that is first issued. But the rebels simply do not have them,” she said.
A generous sponsor later provided Mikhailova with a replacement arm as well a wheelchair.
The arm prosthetic serves a largely cosmetic purpose because it lacks the electronic sensors needed for movement.
“During the operation, the nerve in my arm got pinched, and now I do not go a day without pain,” she said.
“And when I start wearing an artificial leg, that hurts as well. It is simply too much, when two of your limbs hurt at the same time.”
The rebels in east Ukraine say they officially issued just 58 artificial limbs in 2015.
The doctors are in despair at the suffering they see in one of Europe’s bloodiest conflicts since the 1990s wars in the Balkans.
“Because of the fighting, we had to close our hospital for 18 months,” doctor Irina Shupletsova told AFP.
The 50-year-old director of a district medical centre said the waiting list of those seeking help has grown to a staggering 100,000 people.
The figure includes people who suffer from illnesses not linked to the war.
Both the sick and the injured fighters are furious at the lack of medical attention.
Alexander Pashkov joined one of the militia forces after leaving his native Russian city of Voronezh.
Russia denies formally backing the insurgents and claims only that “volunteers” and off-duty soldiers have entered rebel ranks of their own free will.
Pashkov is 27 and no longer has any “idea what I am doing here… after losing a leg and getting captured”.
Pashkov was swapped in a prisoner exchange and now lives in Donetsk.
He also constantly complains about the basic leg prosthetic he received from the insurgency leaders.
“This one is alright for walking. But I need an electronic prosthetic so that I can climb stairs. And that one costs two million rubles ($31,000 / 29,000 euros.)
“The Soviet-style healthcare system that we have here has outlived itself.”
Desperate times call for innovative measures and that is just what some of the disabled have been forced to resort to.
Donetsk has developed specialists who can make artificial limbs from bicycles parts that they attach to a victim’s body in their home.
Engineer Igor Rudenko uses a wheel shock-absorber that he molds with aluminum parts in his workshop to form a foot.
It is a lot cheaper than a simple German prosthetic but appears to be only a makeshift solution.
His first patients have had trouble walking and other medics have frowned on his innovation.
“Right now, I am looking for an improvement,” Rudenko said.
“I am constantly in touch with other people via the social networks who know how to deal with such injuries. And we meet and support each other,” said the engineer.