Jacques Agency

Attack on mosque in Egypt's Sinai kills at least 235: state media   Cairo (AFP) - Armed attackers on Friday killed at least 235 worshippers in a bomb and gun assault on a packed mosque in Egypt's restive North Sinai province, state media reported, the country's deadliest attack in recent memory. A bomb explosion ripped through the Rawda mosque frequented by Sufis roughly 40 kilometres west of the North Sinai capital of El-Arish before gunmen opened fire on those gathered for weekly Friday prayers, officials said. Witnesses said the assailants had surrounded the mosque with all-terrain vehicles then planted a bomb outside. The gunmen then mowed down the panicked worshippers as they attempted to flee and used the congregants' vehicles they had set alight to block routes to the mosque. State television reported at least 235 people were killed and 109 wounded in the attack, the scale of which is unprecedented in a four-year insurgency by Islamist extremist groups. Egypt...

Germany Plunged into Political Crisis After Coalition Talks Fail - The New York Times BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany faced the greatest crisis of her political career on Monday, after late-night negotiations to form a new government collapsed, raising the prospect of a snap election. The chancellor said she remained hopeful about forming a majority government. But if forced to choose, she said she would prefer to go through new elections rather than try to lead a minority government. “I don’t want to say never, but I am very skeptical, and believe that new elections would be the better way forward,” the chancellor told the public broadcaster ARD. The uncertainty raised new doubts about the political longevity of Ms. Merkel, considered perhaps the West’s most ardent defender of democratic values and freedoms. At a time when the European Union is facing a host of pressing problems, from Brexit negotiations with Britain, to the rise of right-wing populism, to separatism in...

Iraqi forces retake last town under Islamic State control - The Washington Post BAGHDAD —  Government forces wrested back the final piece of the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate in Iraq, the country’s military said Friday, reclaiming the small town of Rawah near the border with Syria. The Islamic State extremist group, which at its peak in 2014 held about a third of Iraq, including large cities such as Mosul, Tikrit and Fallujah, is now scattered and severely diminished. With the loss of Rawah, the militants no longer can claim to hold territory in Iraq and are quickly ceding ground in Syria, as well. Still, Iraqi officials warn, the Islamic State poses a threat as it turns to more-traditional terrorist tactics. Since losing its de facto capital of Mosul in July, the group has been able to stage deadly suicide bombings, and its gunmen have struck civilians throughout Iraq. Rawah is a small and sparsely populated town about 68 miles east of the Syrian border. It was su...

Tax reform roadblocks emerge in Senate - POLITICO   Republicans were able to muscle their tax-rewrite  plan , through the House exactly two weeks after it was unveiled, but they are already facing far tougher sledding in the Senate. GOP leadership is confronting mushrooming demands from individual senators with much more power to bollix up the tax plans, thanks to the party’s super-thin majority.

U.S. envoy says no communication, no signal from North Korea amid nuclear crisis North Korea is under heavy international pressure to end its nuclear and missile programmes, pursued in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions, but has vowed never to give up its nuclear arsenal which it says it needs to counter perceived U.S. aggression. Lee Do-hoon, South Korea’s special representative for Korean peace and security affairs, and his U.S. counterpart, Joseph Yun, met on the southern resort island of Jeju, following a summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Donald Trump in Seoul last week. “There is no doubt that both of the presidents want to find a peaceful way in regard to North Korea’s nuclear issue,” Yun told reporters, according to Yonhap news agency. “So we discussed them and we agreed the pressure campaign has to be a central element.”

A Texas State University fraternity pledge has died — continuing the alarming trend of deaths at public university fraternities - AOL News Texas State University on Tuesday suspended the activities of all Greek organizations following the death of a pledge — the second such death at a college fraternity in a month, and the fourth this year.  Matthew Ellis, 20, died on November 13 following an initiation into his fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi,  The University Star reported.  An investigation is currently underway, but preliminary findings indicated that alcohol may have played a role in his death. Texas State  President Denise Trauth emailed the community following Ellis' death, announcing the suspension of all Greek activities pending a review. "As a result of this tragedy, I have suspended activities of all Greek fraternity and sorority chapters at Texas State," Trauth wrote, according to The University Star. "These chapters are prohibited fro...

North Korean state newspaper announces 'death sentence' for Trump - AOL News A North Korean state newspaper has issued a death sentence for U.S. President Donald Trump after he insulted Kim Jong-Un during his recent trip to Asia, according to the  Guardian .  An editorial in the ruling party's newspaper Rodong Sinmun declared Trump a "criminal" and said their nation's people had sentenced him to death because of the unflattering way he talks about their country and their supreme leader.  "The worst crime for which he can never be pardoned is that he dared [to] malignantly hurt the dignity of the supreme leadership," the editorial  read . "He should know that he is just a hideous criminal sentenced to death by the Korean people." The scathing article was in response to comments Trump made during his recent visit to South Korea, where he condemned the North's "cruel dictatorship" in a speech to South Korea’s National Assembly....

Haiti - Environnement : Haiti elected member of the International Council of the UNESCO MAB Program - HaitiLibre.com : Haiti news 7/7 A new element has just been added to the success of the mission of the Haitian delegation which took part in the 39th session of the General Conference of Unesco. In fact, the campaign conducted with partners has enabled Haiti to be elected a member of UNESCO's International Coordinating Council of the Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Program (CIC-MAB), with 116 votes out of 156. The election took place last Thursday at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris. Note that the country will occupy this position until 2021. The election file has been conducted since June 2017 by the team of the Permanent Delegation of Haiti to UNESCO. It is now up to the Haitian State to appoint the representative of Haiti to this body. The Man and the Biosphere Program is an intergovernmental scientific program aimed at establishing a scientific basis for improving relations between t...

Maria Eugenia Pérez Zea re-elected chair of the ICA Gender Equality Committee - Co-operative News The International Co-operative Alliance’s Gender Equality Committee has met in Malaysia where it held elections for its executive committee. The meeting, which preceded the Alliance’s Global Conference and General Assembly in Kuala Lumpur, saw the committee declare its intent to deal with the challenges facing women around the world and empower them within the movement. Maria Eugenia Pérez Zea from Colombia was re-elected chair of the committee. She is also chair of COOMEVA, the country’s biggest co-operative, and is executive director of Ascoop, the national association of co-operatives. Ms Pérez has been active in the movement for 18 years. The close election saw Marjaana Saarikoski  from SOK Group in Finland come second. She was elected vice chair along with  Xiomara Nunez de Cespedes from the Dominican Republic. Ms Pérez said: “I know that Marjaana and I have the same intere...

Zimbabwe’s military takes over country, says President Mugabe is ‘safe’ - The Washington Post HARARE, Zimbabwe —  Zimbabwe’s military took control of the country early Wednesday and detained its longtime leader, President Robert Mugabe, capping a political showdown over Mugabe’s apparent attempts to install his wife as his successor. In a televised announcement after armored vehicles and troops rolled into the capital, Harare, a general insisted that it was “not a military takeover.” Despite the assurances, the events bore all the hallmarks of a coup. Military vehicles were stationed around parts of the city, the army took over the television station and a uniformed general issued a statement warning that “criminals” in Mugabe’s regime were being targeted. Army Gen. Constantino Chiwenga made the move as a struggle over who will succeed the country’s increasingly frail 93-year-old leader came to a head. Mugabe has ruled since he led the country to independence from white-minority ...

California shootings: Gunman identified in deadly rampage; wife among dead - CNN (CNN) Kevin Neal's deadly shooting rampage in Northern California may have been prompted by the fatal shooting of his wife, Tehama County Assistant Sheriff Phil Johnston said Wednesday. Neal, identified as the gunman who killed four people in a string of shootings Tuesday, shot and killed his wife the previous night and concealed her body under a floor in his home, the assistant sheriff said.   The discovery of his wife's body brought the death toll to five. "We believe that's probably what started this whole event," Johnston said of the wife's shooting. Neal had been out of bail on an assault with a deadly weapon charge from January. Before police shot him dead, Neal also injured at least 10 others in a string of shootings that  spanned at least seven sites  in the small community of Rancho Tehama, west of Corning, police said. Those locations include a locked elementary school...

Iran-Iraq Earthquake Kills More Than 400 - The New York Times TEHRAN — Iranians dug through rubble in a frantic search for survivors on Monday, after a powerful earthquake struck near the Iraqi border, killing more than 400 people and injuring thousands of others, officials said. The epicenter of the quake Sunday evening was near Ezgeleh, Iran, about 135 miles northeast of Baghdad, and had a  preliminary magnitude of 7.3 , according to the United States Geological Survey, and seismologists in the country said it was the biggest quake to hit the western part of Iran.

Case of Missing Lebanese Prime Minister Stirs Tensions in the Middle East - The New York Times   BEIRUT, Lebanon — A week after the Lebanese prime minister, Saad Hariri, flew to Saudi Arabia and  announced his resignation , what seemed at first like a bizarre domestic political dispute is escalating tensions in the Middle East and threatening to become a flash point in the struggle for power there. On Friday, Mr. Hariri remained stranded in Saudi Arabia. The Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah said the Saudis were holding him against his will, while the Saudis have said there was a plot to assassinate him. Fractious Lebanese politics and interference in them by Saudi Arabia, Iran and a host of other powers are nothing new, but the Hariri case has become part of a high-stakes buildup of tension that is fueling anxiety about whether the region is on the verge of war. The United States on Friday urged calm, with Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson warning “against any party, withi...

Obama reports for jury duty in Chicago - CNNPolitics He was assigned to a panel that was not called, Chief Judge Tim Evans, who presides in Cook County, said at a news conference held after Obama departed. He added that the 44th president was gracious to others who were there to fulfill their civic duty. "The public allowed him to come in and to do his duty. I thought, for example, he would be reticent about greeting them. He came in and greeted the prospective jurors on both side of the panels. We had about 220 people here. He took time to greet people on both sides," Evans said. Once potential jurors saw that Obama was approachable, Evans said some decided to test their boundaries.  "He discovered that some knew they might have a chance to meet him and they brought books for him to sign," the judge told reporters. "I saw him pause for a moment and I thought his Secret Service panel may not permit him to do that, but he said that he wanted to sign their book...

U.S. Said to Seek Sale of CNN or DirecTV in AT&T-Time Warner Deal - The New York Times The Justice Department has called on AT&T and Time Warner to sell Turner Broadcasting, the group of cable channels that includes CNN, as a potential requirement for approving the companies’ pending $85.4 billion deal, people briefed on the matter said on Wednesday. The other possible way for the merger to win approval would be for AT&T to sell its DirecTV division, two of these people added. The demands set up a potential battle over the fate of the long-in-the-works deal that would create a colossus straddling the worlds of media and telecommunications at a time when upstarts like Netflix are disrupting traditional players in both industries. As originally envisioned, combining AT&T and Time Warner would yield a giant company offering wireless and broadband internet service, DirecTV, the Warner Brothers movie studio and cable channels like HBO and CNN. If the Justice Department for...

Texas Church Shooting Leaves at Least 26 Dead, Officials Say - The New York Times SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Tex. — A gunman clad in all black, with a ballistic vest strapped to his chest and a military-style rifle in his hands, opened fire on parishioners at a Sunday service at a small Baptist church in rural Texas, killing at least 26 people and turning this tiny town east of San Antonio into the scene of the country’s newest mass horror. The gunman was identified as Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, according to two law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing. Mr. Kelley, who lived in New Braunfels, Tex., and had served in the Air Force at a base in New Mexico, died shortly after the attack. The motive of the attack was unclear on Sunday, but the grisly nature of it could not have been clearer: families gathered in pews, clutching Bibles and praying to the Lord, were murdered in cold blood on the spot. Mr. Kelley started firing at the...

New York terror suspect was radicalized domestically, governor says - CNN (CNN) All it took was a man and a truck to inflict the deadliest terror attack on New York City since 9/11. A 29-year-old man plowed into bicyclists and pedestrians just blocks away from the World Trade Center Tuesday afternoon. Mangled bicycles littered the street as medics rushed to the victims. Six victims were killed instantly. Two others died later. And more than a dozen are trying to recover as the country grapples with yet another terror attack. How the New York City truck attack unfolded "This was an act of terror, and a particularly cowardly act of terror aimed at innocent civilians, aimed at people going about their lives who had no idea what was about to hit them," New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said. The suspect has been identified as Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, according to two law enforcement sources. The Uzbekistan native -- who came to the US legally in 2010 -- allegedly dr...