Soccer’s world governing body FIFA has decided to suspend its president Sepp Blatter, secretary general Jerome Valcke and vice-president Michel Platini for 90 days.
The sanctions were handed out by the FIFA’s ethics committee, which is investigating the three over corruption allegations.
It also banned ex-FIFA vice-president Chung Mong-joon for six years.
Issa Hayatou, who heads Africa’s soccer confederation (CAF), will act as FIFA president during Sepp Blatter’s ban.
Spain’s Angel Maria Villar is expected to perform the same role at UEFA – European soccer’s governing body – while Michel Platini is suspended.
Photo Getty Images
Both Chung Mong-joon and Michel Platini are hoping to replace Sepp Blatter when he steps down as president in February 2016.
“The grounds for these decisions are the investigations that are being carried out by the investigatory chamber of the ethics committee,” the FIFA said in a statement.
Sepp Blatter, Jerome Valcke and Michel Platini are banned from any soccer activity in the interim. They deny any wrongdoing.
Earlier this year, US authorities indicted 14 FIFA officials and associates on bribery and racketeering charges. A simultaneous Swiss investigation was started into the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
Michel Platini and South Korean billionaire Chung Mong-joon – who was also fined 100,000 Swiss Francs by the ethics committee – are two of the leading candidates to replace Sepp Blatter in February.
This year’s Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to the Belarusian writer and journalist Svetlana Alexievich “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time”.
Announcing the prize in Stockholm, the chair of the Swedish Academy, Sara Danius, called Svetlana Alexievich’s writing “a monument to courage and suffering in our time”.
The award, presented to a living writer, is worth 8 million kronor ($1.1 million).
Previous winners include literary heavyweights Rudyard Kipling and Ernest Hemingway. French historical author Patrick Modiano won in 2014.
It has been half a century since a writer working primarily in non-fiction won the Nobel – and Svetlan Alexievich is the first journalist to win the award.
Her best-known works in English translation include Voices From Chernobyl, an oral history of the 1986 nuclear catastrophe; and Boys In Zinc, a collection of first-hand accounts from the Soviet-Afghan war. The title refers to the zinc coffins in which the dead came home.
Boys In Zinc caused controversy and outrage when it was first published in Russia, where reviewers called it a “slanderous piece of fantasy” and part of a “hysterical chorus of malign attacks”.
Svetlana Alexievich has also been critical of the Belarusian government, leading to a period of persecution – in which her telephone was bugged and she was banned from making public appearances.
Photo Getty Images
She spent 10 years in exile from 2000, living in Italy, France, Germany and Sweden, among other places, before moving back to Minsk.
Svetlana Alexievich was born in 1948 in the Ukrainian town of Ivano-Frankivsk, then known as Stanislav, to a Belarusian father and Ukrainian mother.
The family moved to Belarus after her father completed his military service, and Svetlana Alexievich studied journalism at the University of Minsk between 1967 and 1972.
After graduation, she worked as a journalist for several years before publishing her first book, War’s Unwomanly Face, in 1985.
Based on interviews with hundreds of women who participated in the World War Two, it set a template for her future works, constructing narratives from witnesses to some the world’s most devastating events.
On her personal website, Svetlana Alexievich explains her pursuit of journalism: “I chose a genre where human voices speak for themselves.”
She has previously won the Swedish PEN prize for her “courage and dignity as a writer”.
Sara Danius said Svetlana Alexievich had spent nearly 40 years studying the people of the former Soviet Union, but that her work was not only about history but “something eternal, a glimpse of eternity”.
“By means of her extraordinary method – a carefully composed collage of human voices – Alexievich deepens our comprehension of an entire era,” the Swedish Academy added.
Svetlana Alexievich was the bookmakers’ favorite to win 2015 Nobel award, according to Ladbrokes.
She beat other hot favorites Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami and Kenyan novelist Ngugi Wa Thiong’o.
Svetlana Alexievich is the 14th woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in its history.
A total of 112 individuals have won it between 1901 and 2015. The prize was suspended several times during the first and second world wars.
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Photo Source: dorian.pro
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Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff broke the law in managing the country’s budget for 2014, an audit court has ruled.
Dilma Rousseff’s government was accused of borrowing money illegally from state banks to make up for budget shortfalls.
The opposition says the ruling by the Federal Accounts Court – which reports to Congress – paves the way for impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff.
She was re-elected less than a year ago but has record low popularity ratings.
The Brazilian government says it would challenge the audit court’s ruling in the Supreme Court.
“The game is not over,” said Attorney General Luis Adams.
The minister who handled the case in the Accounts Court, Augusto Nardes, said the government disregarded fiscal and constitutional principles in the handling of the 2014 accounts.
Dilma Rousseff’s government raised spending “without fiscal sustainability and without the required transparency”, said Augusto Nardes.
The irregularities amount to more than $26 billion (100 billion reais), according to the court.
If the decision is upheld by the Supreme Court, the government’s accounts will then be assessed by the Congress, where Dilma Rousseff’s coalition has a majority.
This is the latest in a series of setbacks for Dilma Rousseff.
On October 6, Brazil’s top electoral authority said that it would re-open an investigation into alleged misuse of funds during Dilma Rousseff’s re-election campaign.
The Supreme Electoral Court will try to determine if Dilma Rousseff’s and Vice-President Michel Temer’s campaign drew on donations from illegal sources.
The probe was requested by the opposition PSDB party.
The Brazilian economy has gone into recession and is expected to shrink by 3% in 2015.
The Brazilian government’s popularity has fallen amid corruption scandals involving senior politicians from Dilma Rousseff’s Worker’s Party and other coalition members.
Donald Trump’s challenge to a planned offshore wind farm close to his golf resort in Scotland will go to the UK’s Supreme Court in London on October 8.
Developers intend to site the large turbine structures close to Donald Trump’s golfing development on the Aberdeenshire coast in Scotland.
The Republican presidential hopeful has taken on the Scottish government, which approved the plan.
Donald Trump began his challenge to the decision to grant planning permission more than two years ago.
He was furious when the Scottish government approved plans for the renewable energy development within sight of his multi-million pound golf development on the Menie Estate in the north-east of Scotland.
Photo PA
Donald Trump said the 11 turbines would spoil the view.
He made a series of legal challenges in the Scottish courts and has now taken the fight to the UK’s Supreme Court in London.
Donald Trump has argued that planning consent for the wind farm was so imprecise as to make it legally invalid.
Following Donald Trump’s earlier unsuccessful actions in the Scottish courts, the Scottish government said its decision-making process had been vindicated and that the “painstaking work” of Marine Scotland staff who advised it was both fair and reasonable.
The UK’s Supreme Court judges are expected to deliver their verdict at a later date.
Michael Horn, the CEO and president of Volkswagen Group of America, has admitted he was aware early last year of the emissions cheating affecting millions of the company’s vehicles.
The VW US boss said he was told about “possible emissions non-compliance” in the spring of 2014.
The revelation was made in testimony due to be presented to a committee of the House of Representatives investigating the scandal on October 8.
Michael Horn said he was told after a study by West Virginia University was published.
“I was informed that EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] regulations included various penalties for non-compliance with the emissions standards and that the agencies can conduct engineering tests which could include ‘defeat device’ testing or analysis,” he said.
“I was also informed that the company engineers would work with the agencies to resolve the issue.”
Michael Horn said in the written evidence it was not until September 3, 2015, that VW told US authorities about the “defeat device” in emissions software in diesel vehicles for the model years 2009 to 2015.
The software allowed a vehicle to recognize whether it was being driven on the road or running in a test laboratory, and turn engine emissions controls on or off.
Michael Horn said the events had been “deeply troubling”, adding: “I did not think that something like this was possible at the Volkswagen Group.
“We have broken the trust of our customers, dealerships, and employees, as well as the public and regulators.”
He said the company took full responsibility for its actions and was co-operating with all relevant authorities.
“Responsible parties will be identified and held accountable,” Michael Horn said.
As well as striving to rebuild the automaker’s reputation, the priority was finding remedies for the three groups of vehicles affected, he said.
Michael Horn will give evidence to the House Energy committee and Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations before being questioned by the politicians about the scandal, which affects half a million cars in the US.
VW on October 7 appointed former finance chief Hans Dieter Poetsch as its new chairman, following a board meeting to discuss the emissions scandal.
The search for missing cargo ship El Faro, which sank near the Bahamas with 33 people on board, has been called off by the Coast Guard.
The 735ft cargo vessel and its crew have been missing since issuing a distress call on October 1.
Search planes have found debris including life jackets, containers and oil in the water, but only one body has been recovered.
It is not clear why the captain decided to lead the ship into waters near Hurricane Joaquin.
“We were very saddened to learn that no survivors have been found,” said Bella Dinh-Zarr, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
The search officially ended on October 7 at sunset.
“They did all they could in this search effort… our crews and aircrafts flew repeatedly into that storm,” Coast Guard Captain Mark Fedor said on the same day.
An empty, heavily damaged life boat was also found.
The coast guard said it searched 70,000 sq nautical miles attempting to find the crew of 28 Americans and five Poles.
The El Faro ship, which was travelling from Florida to Puerto Rico, was taking on water before it sank according to the distress call.
Its owners, Tote Maritime, say the ship lost power after its engines broke down.
Tote Maritime, said two vessels it dispatched to the scene had found a container “which appears to be from the El Faro”.
In a statement it said the crew were “equipped to handle situations such as changing weather.”
Hurricane Joaquin brought heavy rains to the Bahamas, damaging a number of houses.
Hillary Clinton has come out against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal championed by President Barack Obama.
The historic trade deal involves 12 countries along the Pacific rim, including the US, Australia and Japan.
In a recent interview, Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton said the agreement left many “unanswered questions” and did not met the “high bar” she had set.
“I am not in favor of what I have learned about it,” she told PBS.
The former Secretary of State joins rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley, in opposing the agreement.
Photo Getty Images
The deal took five years to negotiate and covers 40% of the global economy.
In an interview on October 7, Hillary Clinton said she would only support a trade bill that helped American workers.
“I have said from the very beginning that we had to have a trade agreement that would create good American jobs, raise wages and advance our national security and I still believe that is the high bar we have to meet,” she said.
President Barack Obama, for whom the deal would be a prime economic achievement of his second term, said the deal would level the global playing field for US workers.
“[The deal] includes the strongest commitments on labor and the environment of any trade agreement in history,” he said after the agreement was reached.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton also plans to propose a tax on high-frequency trading, her campaign said.
The tax would target securities transactions with excessive levels of order cancelations that can destabilize the markets, a campaign aide said.
Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone recorded their first week with no new cases of Ebola since the outbreak began in March 2014.
The Ebola outbreak has so far killed more than 11,000 people in the three West African countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
New Ebola cases have fallen sharply in 2015, but the WHO has warned that the disease could break out again.
The epidemic is the worst known occurrence of Ebola in history.
More than 500 people believed to have had dangerous contact with an Ebola patient remain under follow-up in Guinea, the WHO said in a report.
The health agency also said several “high-risk” people linked to recent patients in Guinea and Sierra Leone had been lost track of.
Liberia has already been declared free of the disease after 42 days without a new case. It is the second time the country received the declaration, following a flare-up in June.
Sierra Leone released its last known Ebola patients on September 28 and must now wait to be declared free of the disease.
Guinea’s most recent cases were recorded on September 27.
Hans Dieter Poetsch has been appointed as VW’s new chairman, following a board meeting to discuss the emissions scandal.
Former VW finance chief said it would be “some time” before the carmaker could uncover the details of the emissions test cheating.
Earlier, the automaker said it expected to start a recall of cars affected by the scandal in January 2016.
All affected cars will be fixed by the end of 2016, VW CEO Matthias Muller told German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Only a few employees have been involved in the scandal, Matthias Muller added in the interview.
In his first pronouncement as chairman, Hans Dieter Poetsch said the company’s internal inquiry into the scandal would take time.
“Nobody is served by speculation or vague, preliminary progress reports,” he said.
“Therefore it will take some time until we have factual and reliable results and can provide you with comprehensive information,” Hans Dieter Poetsch added, before declining to take any questions.
VW has said emissions test-cheating software is present in 11 million diesel vehicles.
The company said it would also look into its various brands and models, singling out Bugatti, its supercar marque.
Earlier, Mathias Muller told employees at VW’s Wolfsburg home plant in Germany the company is facing changes that “will not be painless”.
All investments that were not deemed absolutely necessary would be abandoned or delayed, he said.
Technical solutions were “within view” and the firm would do everything it could to keep jobs secure, he added.
Future investment in plant, technology and vehicles would be put “under scrutiny”.
“We will do everything to ensure that Volkswagen will stand for good and secure jobs in the future,” he added.
VW has set aside €6.5 billion to cover the cost of the scandal, but analysts say the final bill could be much higher, with potential regulatory fines in the US, class action lawsuits and the cost of fixing the cars.
Soccer’s governing body FIFA has decided to provisionally suspend its president, Sepp Blatter, for ninety days.
Members of FIFA’s ethics committee met this week after the Swiss attorney general opened criminal proceedings against Sepp Blatter, 79, in September. They have recommended a 90-day provisional suspension.
Swiss Sepp Blatter is accused of signing a contract “unfavorable” to soccer’s governing body and making a “disloyal payment” to UEFA president Michel Platini, 60.
Sepp Blatter, who has run FIFA since 1998, and Michel Platini, who wants to succeed him, deny any wrongdoing.
A final decision will be made on October 9 by Hans Joachim Eckhert, the head of FIFA’s ethics adjudicatory chamber, according to a close friend of Sepp Blatter.
No decision has been made on whether to suspend Michel Platini.
On October 7, Sepp Blatter told a German magazine that he was being “condemned without there being any evidence for wrongdoing”.
The ethics committee’s adjudicatory chamber had been meeting in Zurich since October 5.
The investigation is centered on allegations believed to be around a 2005 TV rights deal between FIFA and Jack Warner, the former president of CONCACAF, the governing body of football in North and Central America and the Caribbean.
It is also examining a payment of 2 million Swiss francs that Michel Platini received in 2011 for working for Sepp Blatter. He claims it was “valid compensation” for work carried out more than nine years previously.
Michel Platini has provided information to the criminal investigation but said he has done so as a witness.
Swiss prosecutors said Michel Platini is being treated as “in between a witness and an accused person” as they investigate corruption at FIFA.
Infocus is a rising star in the smartphone market and each iteration of their products has done nothing but solidify this idea. The phablet market has become saturated with overpriced devices that fail to deliver as well as cheap knockoffs that claim to have the same features of the pricier models. Infocus has had to work hard to make inroads in this saturated marketplace due to their late entry, but with top notch products, they have chance to shake up the major players eventually.
The thing that sticks out first with the M810T is the price point. Coming in at less than $143 on gearbest.com it’s a heck of a bargain once you understand everything it can do. This is a calculated, generous platform created by Infocus to show customers that they deserve the same amount of features as an iPad but without the arm and a leg it costs to buy it. This phablet has high quality components such as a Snapdragon 801 processor (one of the fastest) and Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The processor obviously allows for seamless use between applications and the glass keeps it from breaking if you tap it too hard.
The phablet was shipped very fast and we received it in a few business days. The packaging is good and sturdy, it comes in an elegant box and it’s wrapped in a layer of bubble wrap and another layer of packaging on top as you can see in the pictures:
Even though it’s quite durable, it’s also on the light side. As rival companies Samsung and Apple seek to create thinner and lighter tablets, everyone else has to raise the bar as well. This one is only 6.99mm thick and very compact. The screen itself, made of the durable glass, is 5.5 inches with a very high resolution and vibrant color scheme built in. This allows great photos to be taken with its rear camera which clocks in at 13 megapixels. It’s also got the even more necessary selfie or front camera with 5 megapixels.
The high end processor will let you watch movies, play games or surf the web and leave all these applications open at the same time. This thankfully doesn’t lead to overheating on the device, a common drawback that users encounter. And since it does connect up to 4G you’ll be able to access the highest speed internet available.
On the storage side, you’ll find it comes standard with 16 GB with the option to insert a 64 GB memory card, if you need. Some of the games you download can take up some serious space, so might be worth the investment. Since the price is so reasonable to start, you can probably afford to splurge on the memory card.
For people who are getting their first phablet or looking to replace one, the Infocus M810T is a modest and relatively safe investment. You’ll only be paying around $143 and you get a lot of upside. As Infocus becomes more recognizable their products will increase in demand. The time to get on the bandwagon is now.
A group of protesters have demonstrated outside Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) that is showing work by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, complaining that the French impressionist “sucks at painting”.
The group held placards bearing slogans like “God hates Renoir” and “Aesthetic terrorism”.
The protest was organized by the “Renoir Sucks At Painting movement”, who say the painter’s work does not deserve to be on show.
They claim it will be “the first of many anti-Renoir direct actions”.
In a statement on Instagram, the group said: “The MFA’s decision to hang Renoir paintings, considering the fact the museum has masterpieces by actually talented artist [sic] in storage, is a curatorial failing, and amounts to an act of Aesthetic Terrorism.”
The Associated Press reported that the museum would not comment and that the demonstrators acknowledged they were being ironic.
The Boston Globe reported that they chanted: “Put some fingers on those hands! Give us work by Paul Gauguin!” and “Other art is worth your while! Renoir paints a steaming pile!”
The protest is being led by Harvard stem cell scientist Dr. Ben Ewen-Campen, who wrote: “Seeing Renoirs in the MFA makes me sad.
“All the other art in the museum is great – Manet, Van Gogh, Singer Sargent, they’re great! But then we get exposed to Renoir’s deformed pink fuzzy women and scary looking babies. It really detracts from the overall experience.”
This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded jointly to Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar “for mechanistic studies of DNA repair”.
Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar were named as the winners on October 7 at a news conference in Stockholm, Sweden.
Their work uncovered the mechanisms used by cells to repair damaged DNA – a fundamental process in living cells.
The prize money of eight million Swedish kronor ($970,000) will be shared among the winners.
“It was a surprise. I know that over the years I’ve occasionally been considered for a prize, but so have hundreds of other people. I feel lucky and proud to be selected today,” Tomas Lindahl, from the Francis Crick Institute in the UK, told journalists.
Claes Gustafsson, from the Nobel Committee, said the recipients had “explained the processes at the molecular level that guard the integrity of our genomes”.
DNA is open to an onslaught of different phenomena which can generate defects in our genomes.
UV radiation and molecules known as free radicals can cause damage. Furthermore, defects can arise when DNA is copied during cell division – a process that occurs millions of times each day in our bodies.
“Cigarette smoke contains small reactive chemicals, which bind to the DNA and prevent it from being replicated properly – so they are mutagens. And once there is damage in the DNA this can cause diseases including cancer,” said Prof. Tomas Lindahl.
A host of molecular systems continuously monitor and repair our genetic information. The three new laureates mapped in detail how these mechanisms worked.
A Kentucky pet store owner has been nearly crashed to death by a massive python he was feeding.
Newport Kentucky police said they were called to Captive Born Reptiles and found the snake wrapped around the man.
Terry Wilkens was not breathing when the officers pried the python off him but he resumed breathing shortly afterwards.
The python weighed about 125lb and measured 20ft long.
“It was only by the grace of God that one of the officers knew how to deal with snakes,” Newport Kentucky Police Chief Tom Collins told the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Officer Gregory Ripberger grabbed the snake by its head and uncurled the python from Terry Wilkens.
Tom Collins said Terry Wilkens was recovering at a hospital in nearby Cincinnati, Ohio, and he was alert and talking. The type of python that attacked pet store worker was not disclosed.
Terry Wilkens’ daughter, Keiko Wilkens, said in a statement the incident was overblown and her father had recovered. She said her father’s life was never in danger.
According to its website, the pet shop – which has two locations – specializes in breeding reptiles rather than selling wild animals.
Four people have been arrested in Sydney, Australia, in relation to the killing of police worker Curtis Cheng.
More than 200 officers swooped on several properties on October 7, police said, arresting males aged between 16 and 22. A fifth man was held over unrelated fraud charges.
Curtis Cheng, 58, was shot dead outside his office on October 2 in what police are treating as a terror attack.
Police shot dead his attacker, 15-year-old Farhad Jaber, at the scene.
Farhad Jaber, an Australian born in Iran and of Iraqi-Kurdish heritage, is reported to have shouted religious slogans as he killed Curtis Cheng, a police accountant.
Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull has said the attack “appears to have been an act of terrorism”.
According to Australian media, some of the properties raided on October 7 had also been raided by police last year, in a major anti-terror operation in Sydney.
New South Wales Police Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn said that police suspect Farhad Jaber did not act alone, and that some of those arrested were known to police.
“Time will clearly tell about what their associations may have been leading up to the events on Friday,” she said.
Catherine Burn was questioned by reporters on why Farhad Jaber, who is not thought to have had a criminal history, was not on the authorities’ radar.
“It’s a reality of life we can’t be everywhere with everybody at every single second of the day,” she said, but added that police believe he must have come under “some influence, whether it was ideologically, religious or politically motivated”.
Acting Deputy Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police Neil Gaughan said police were co-operating with Turkish officials to find Farhad Jabar’s sister, thought to have flown to Istanbul not long before the attack.
However, he said there was no evidence that she was involved in the attack.
Police said the raids were not connected to the arrest on October 6 of another teenage boy, who attended the same school as Farhad Jaber.
The 17-year-old boy was asked about alleged social media posts, but became threatening and intimidated officers.
Local media reported he had written Facebook posts defending Farhad Jaber’s actions, and made threats against another police station.
Dozens of Australians are thought to be fighting with Islamic State (ISIS) militants in Iraq and Syria and the Australian government has introduced new national security laws in response.
US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker has arrived in Cuba for two days of talks focusing on the trade embargo.
Penny Pritzker will discuss recent measures approved by the US to mitigate the impact of the embargo.
Since the US and Cuba announced last year they were restoring relations, President Barack Obama has pushed for the restrictions to be scrapped.
However, Barack Obama faces opposition from the Republican majority in the Congress.
Photo AP
Penny Pritzker is the most senior American official to visit Cuba since Secretary of State John Kerry reopened the embassy in Havana in July.
Shortly after landing in Havana, Penny Pritzker visited the Special Enterprise Zone, an area developed near the Mariel port to encourage foreign investment.
On October 7, the secretary of commerce is due to meet the Cuban trade and foreign ministers for discussions on the embargo.
The US announced in recent weeks a number of measures to encourage trade even with the embargo still in place.
American companies will no longer be breaking US law for setting up premises in Cuba, the US authorities announced.
The Cuban government needs to lift some of its own bureaucratic and legal obstacles for the measures to work.
There may be some reluctance from the Cuban authorities to allow a faster pace of change while there are other issues pending, such as new civil aviation rules, ferry services between Florida and Cuba and greater internet access.
The first American economic sanctions against Cuba were imposed in 1960.
McDonald’s has started serving its All Day Breakfast menu on October 6.
But the extended breakfast menu offers a limited selection and varies by location. Just half of McDonald’s 24 total breakfast items are available as part of the full-day menu. Several items like the Egg White Delight McMuffin or the McGriddles did not make the cut.
McDonald’s wrote on its website: “Our All Day Breakfast menu is finally here. Enjoy savory breakfast sandwiches like a Sausage McMuffin with Egg or Sausage Biscuit and even golden brown, melt-in-your-mouth Hotcakes anytime you want.”
However, it mentions that “Menu items vary by location”.
Photo McDonald’s
The new All Day Breakfast menu includes: Egg McMuffin, Sausage McMuffin, Sausage McMuffin with Egg, Bacon Egg&Cheese Biscuit, Sausage Biscuit, Sausage Biscuit with Egg, Hotcakes, Hotcakes and Sausage, Fruit ‘N Yogurt Parfait, Sausage Burrito, Fruit & Maple Oatmeal, Hash Browns.
On social media, some Twitter users expressed disappointment about the limited menu.
About 20% of markets, which are mostly in the Southeast, will serve biscuits all day while about 80% of markets will serve McMuffins.
This means if you’re a biscuit lover on the West Coast with a hankering for a bacon egg and cheese biscuit for dinner, you’re likely out of luck.
Hash browns also won’t be available everywhere though, spokeswoman Lisa McComb notes the “vast majority” or about 90% will have them.
Ex-United Nations General Assembly President John Ashe has been arrested in New York after being charged with taking $1.3 million in bribes from Chinese billionaire Ng Lap Seng.
New York prosecutors said John Ashe “converted the UN into a platform for profit” as he helped real estate mogul Ng Lap Seng gain government contracts.
John Ashe is accused of taking $1.3 million and spending the cash on luxury goods.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was “shocked and deeply troubled” by the allegations.
“In return for Rolex watches, a basketball court and bespoke suits, John Ashe sold himself and the global institution he led,” said US Federal Attorney Preet Bharara.
Photo AP
“United by greed, they converted the UN into a platform for profit.”
Prosecutors say John Ashe used his position as permanent resident to the UN for Antigua and Barbuda and General Assembly head to introduce a United Nations document supporting a multibillion-dollar UN-sponsored conference centre that Ng Lap Seng hoped to build as his legacy in Macau, where he lived.
The conference centre was supposed to function as a satellite operation for the world body.
The scheme unfolded between 2011 and 2014, including John Ashe’s tenure as General Assembly head, prosecutors said.
John Ashe also set up meetings with government officials in Antigua and Kenya to help the real estate developers land big development contracts, Preet Bharara said.
He is also said to have evaded tax on the bribe money he received and allowed the businesspeople pay for him and his family to stay at an $850-a-night hotel in New Orleans.
John Ashe was arrested on October 6. Five others including Ng Lap Seng are also being held.
They include another diplomat, Francis Lorenzo from the Dominican Republic, and two naturalized US citizens who live in China who allegedly helped facilitate the scheme, who have been charged with offences including bribery of a UN official and conspiracy to launder money.
Preet Bharara said the investigation was continuing and more arrests were likely.
German TV station ARD has come under fire after airing a mocked-up image of Chancellor Angela Merkel wearing Islamic headscarf.
ARD has denied broadcasting “anti-Islamic propaganda”.
The image was shown in the background of a segment on refugee quotas in the channel’s Report from Berlin program.
The program has received heavy criticism from viewers, some of whom said the image resembled those used by anti-Islam movement PEGIDA.
ARD said that the image was “designed to capture people’s attention”.
“We welcome the many criticisms of the graphic in yesterday’s Report from Berlin and we are sorry some disagreed with our portrayal of the chancellor or even misunderstood,” the program said in a statement published on Facebook.
The statement said the graphic was intended as satire and reflected “the achievements of our Western society – freedom of expression, press freedom and equality”.
However, viewers took to Facebook to accuse the channel of anti-Islamic propaganda, calling the report “manipulative” and “appalling”.
“This is not constructive journalism,” wrote another.
Some defended the report, saying the program was entitled to freedom of expression and had asked “very reasonable questions”.
Photo ARD
Many viewers compared the image to placards used by the Germany anti-immigrant protest group PEGIDA – which stands for Patriotic Europeans against the Islamification of the West.
The group attracted tens of thousands to protest marches in cities around Germany earlier this year, with some waving placards displaying Angela Merkel wearing a headscarf.
PEGIDA’s protests have seen a resurgence in numbers recently after infighting led to cancellations and a dip in attendance.
On October 3, several thousand people attended protests in two towns – Plauen and Sebnitz – after a call to action by the group.
The ARD controversy comes at a time of heightened tension over immigration in Germany, which has said it is expecting 800,000 refugees and migrants to enter the country by the end of 2015.
However, a report leaked to German media suggests officials have put the figure far higher – at about 1.5 million.
Angela Merkel has come under growing pressure within Germany to clarify official estimates and defend her open-door policy towards refugees.
This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to Japanese Takaaki Kajita and Canadian Arthur B. McDonald “for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass”.
Neutrinos are ubiquitous subatomic particles with almost no mass and which rarely interact with anything else, making them very difficult to study.
Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald led two teams which made key observations of the particles inside big underground instruments in Japan and Canada.
They were named on October 6 at a news conference in Stockholm, Sweden.
Goran Hansson, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which decides on the award, declared: “This year’s prize is about changes of identity among some of the most abundant inhabitants of the Universe.”
Prof. Arthur McDonald is a professor of particle physics at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada. He said hearing the news was “a very daunting experience”.
“Fortunately, I have many colleagues as well, who share this prize with me,” he added.
“[It’s] a tremendous amount of work that they have done to accomplish this measurement.
“We have been able to add to the world’s knowledge at a very fundamental level.”
Prof. Takaaki Kajita, from the University of Tokyo, described the win as “kind of unbelievable”. He said he thought his work was important because it had contradicted previous assumptions.
“I think the significance is – clearly there is physics that is beyond the Standard Model.”
In the late 1990s, physicists were faced with a mystery: all their Earth-based detectors were picking out far fewer neutrinos than theoretical models predicted – based on how many should be produced by distant nuclear reactions, from our own Sun to far-flung supernovas.
Photo NobelPrize
Those detectors mostly entail huge volumes of fluid, buried deep underground to avoid interference. When such a vast space is littered with light detectors, neutrinos can be glimpsed because of the tiny flashes of light that occur when they – very occasionally – bump into an atom.
They include the Super-Kamiokande detector beneath Japan’s Mount Kamioka, where Prof. Takaaki Kajita still works, and the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Ontario, Canada, run by Prof. Arthur McDonald. Both are housed in disused mines.
In 1998, Prof. Takaaki Kajita’s team reported that neutrinos they had caught, bouncing out of collisions in the Earth’s atmosphere, had switched identity: they were a different “flavor” from what those collisions must have released.
Then in 2001, the group led by Prof. Arthur McDonald announced that the neutrinos they were detecting in Ontario, which started out in the Sun, had also “flipped” from their expected identity.
This discovery of the particle’s wobbly flavors had crucial implications. It explained why neutrino detections had not matched the predicted quantities – and it meant that the baffling particles must have a mass.
This contradicted the Standard Model of particle physics and changed calculations about the nature of the Universe, including its eternal expansion.
Prof. Olga Botner, a member of the prize committee from Uppsala University, said although the work was done by huge teams of physicists, the prize went to two of the field’s pioneers.
She said Prof. Arthur McDonald had proposed and overseen the building of the Sudbury observatory in the 1980s, and been its director since 1990.
“He has been the organizational and intellectual leader of this venture.”
Prof. Takaaki Kajita, meanwhile, did his PhD research at Kamiokande and then led the atmospheric neutrino group, “trying to make sense of the data they were getting” in the late 1990s.
The total number of Nobel physics laureates recognized since 1901 is now 201, including only two women.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences also decides on the chemistry Nobel – announced tomorrow.
The first of the 2015 Nobel Prizes, for physiology or medicine, was awarded on Monday by the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet. It was shared by researchers who developed pioneering drugs against parasitic diseases.
Oscar Pistorius has been ordered to undergo psychotherapy by a judge-led panel which upheld a decision taken in August to block his release from prison.
The treatment should focus on the factors leading to the crime that he committed, an official statement said.
The convicted South African athlete shot dead his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp at his home in 2013, saying he mistook her for a burglar.
Oscar Pistorius, now 28, was convicted of culpable homicide, or manslaughter, in 2014.
The double amputee had hoped to be released in August after a parole board ruled that he could serve the rest of his five-year prison sentence under house arrest.
However, South Africa’s Justice Minister Michael Masutha prevented the release, saying the decision had been taken prematurely.
At the time of his intervention, Oscar Pistorius had been granted parole only six months into his five-year sentence.
Michael Masutha argued that the law states that an offender can only be considered for parole after serving one-sixth of his sentence, in this case 10 months.
On October 5, a panel, led by Judge Lucy Mailula, ruled that Michael Masutha had acted correctly.
It said the parole board should again consider Ocar Pistorius’ request to be placed under house arrest, or correctional supervision.
The panel ruled that psychotherapy should be given “even if the offender is, indeed placed under correctional supervision”, the prisons department said in a statement.
Oscar Pistorius should “be subjected to psychotherapy in order to address criminogenic factors of the crime he committed,” it said.
It also ruled that the parole board should consider imposing conditions restricting the use of firearms by the offender, the statement added.
Reeva Steenkamp was killed after he fired multiple shots though a locked door on Valentine’s Day 2013.
High Court Judge Thokozile Masipa acquitted Oscar Pistorius of murder in 2014, saying there was insufficient proof to convict him.
The prosecution has appealed against the acquittal and the case will be heard next month by some of South Africa’s most senior judges.
Oscar Pistorius, who was born without the fibulas in both of his legs, and had surgery to amputate both below the knee while still a baby, went on to become one of South Africa’s best-known sports stars, and was the first amputee to compete against able-bodied athletes at the 2012 London Olympics.
American Airlines pilot Michael Johnston, who collapsed and died on an overnight flight from Phoenix to Boston, had a heart condition, his family said.
Cpt. Michael Johnston, 57, was flying the AA plane with 147 passengers and five crew on board when he “passed away while at work”, the airline said.
The co-pilot took over and made an emergency landing in Syracuse.
Michael Johnston’s wife told local TV she had been told her husband had probably died of a heart attack. He had had double heart bypass surgery in 2006.
He had been flying as a first officer and then as a captain since 1990.
Doctors waiting on the tarmac pronounced him dead at the scene.
Passengers on the flight said they had experienced a quick descent and some turbulence before hearing a member of the flight crew announce that the captain was unwell.
They learned of his death on a later flight to Boston manned by a new crew.
American Airlines chairman Doug Parker said the airline “couldn’t be more proud of the teamwork this crew showed during an extremely difficult time”.
Airline pilots must pass physical exams every 12 months – and every six months for captains who are 40 or older.
Aviation experts said there was never any danger to passengers, because pilots and co-pilots were equally capable of flying.
Captains and co-pilots usually take turns flying and handling takeoffs and landings, said former airline pilot James Record, who teaches aviation at Dowling College in New York.
