Hasna Ait Boulahcen, who died in a police raid after the Paris attacks, died of asphyxiation, French prosecutors say.
However, her family argues she was murdered.
Hasna Ait Boulahcen, 26, died in a Saint-Denis flat alongside suspected ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud.
Her family’s lawyer Fabien N’Doumou said she may have been shot by police.
The Paris prosecutor’s office has said an autopsy shows Hasna Ait Boulahcen died from asphyxiation after an explosion caused by a suicide vest.
Reports in the days after the raid said Hasna Ait Boulahcen had detonated the suicide vest.
In early January, prosecutors said a third suspect who died in the raid, Belgian-Moroccan national Chakib Akrouh, was wearing the explosives.
Hasna Ait Boulahcen’s mother, sister and brother have lodged a murder complaint, against persons unknown. They are asking for her body to be returned for burial, and for the investigation to re-examine how she died.
The raid took place on November 18, five days after the attacks in which 130 people were killed.
Reports in French media said Hasna Ait Boulahcen, who was Abdelhamid Abaaoud’s cousin, was responsible for finding the flat in which he hid, and drove him there in the days after the attacks.
Hasna Ait Boulahcen, the daughter of Moroccan immigrants, “was under pressure by her cousin”, the family’s complaint says, according to French network iTele.
The complaint, according to iTele, focuses on a recording made outside the flat during the raid, in which a woman’s voice is heard shouting: “Can I leave? I want to leave.”
Mexican regional politician Lucero Guadalupe Sanchez Lopez is being questioned by police about her alleged links to recently recaptured drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
Lucero Guadalupe Sanchez Lopez, 26, is a representative in Sinaloa, northern Mexico, where El Chapo (Shorty) Guzman has his powerbase.
Police officials said they wanted to know about an alleged visit Lucero Guadalupe Sanchez Lopez made to El Chapo Guzman prior to his jailbreak.
Lucero Guadalupe Sanchez Lopez denies the allegations and accuses the government of turning the arrest of El Chapo Guzman into a “media show”.
El Chapo Guzman was re-arrested on January 8 after six months on the run.
The attorney general’s office said federal police officers had taken Lucero Guadalupe Sanchez Lopez to Mexico City.
In a statement, the office said she would be questioned over an alleged visit she made to El Chapo Guzman in jail under a false identity.
Officials said that in 2014 Lucero Guadalupe Sanchez Lopez had shown guards false papers to see El Chapo Guzman at the Altiplano maximum-security prison, where he was being held prior to his escape in July 2015.
Photo Facebook
Lucero Guadalupe Sanchez Lopez has not been charged with any crime and has not been stripped of her post as congresswoman, the statement adds.
On January 19, Attorney General Arely Gomez told Mexican newspaper El Universal that Lucero Guadalupe Sanchez Lopez and El Chapo Guzman had spent New Year’s Eve together.
At the time, the leader of the Sinaloa drugs cartel was on the run following his escape from Altiplano prison through a one-mile-long tunnel.
He was captured in Los Mochis, a town in Sinaloa state, on January 8.
According to local media, Lucero Guadalupe Sanchez Lopez is the youngest person to have been elected as a state representative.
Mexican daily El Universal reports that Lucero Guadalupe Sanchez Lopez ran an election campaign characterized by lavish rallies at which bands entertained voters and gifts were handed out.
Local media have also alleged that Lucero Guadalupe Sanchez Lopez, whose ex-husband was shot dead in 2014, has had at least one child with El Chapo Guzman.
She has denied having a relationship with the drug lord.
While there is little official information about El Chapo Guzman’s family, those who have followed his criminal career believe he has 18 children with seven different women.
A prison official, Eduardo Guerrero, said that Emma Coronel, a former beauty queen who had twin girls with El Chapo Guzman, was prevented from visiting the drug lord on January 16 because she could not provide the right papers.
Eduardo Guerrero said Emma Coronel could not present proof that she had been married to Joaquin Guzman since 2007, as she insisted.
According to Eduardo Guerrero, El Chapo Guzman “will have to give us a divorce certificate [from his previous marriage] and then he has to demonstrate the common-law marriage” in order to be allowed to see Emma Coronel.
Eduardo Guerrero added that security had been ramped up at the Altiplano jail to prevent El Chapo Guzman from escaping again, including training dogs to detect his scent.
The prison official also said that any food given to El Chapo Guzman was first tasted by a dog, to prevent the inmate from being poisoned.
Global stock markets have risen, a day after billions were wiped off the value of shares amid global market turmoil.
In the US, the Dow Jones was up 123.96 points, or 0.8%, at 15,7890.70 in early trade.
European markets were also higher, and shares in the US were up shortly after trading began.
However, investors remain worried over the continuing slide in oil prices and slowing growth in China.
London’s FTSE 100 index, which measures the share prices of the 100 most valuable companies traded on the London Stock Exchange, was up nearly 1.5%.
The index rose 83.10 points to 5,756.68, and the share indexes in France and Germany were both up by more than 1.5%.
Much earlier, Japan’s main share index closed down by more than 2%.
On January 20, global stock markets suffered hefty losses and London’s FTSE 100 ended the day down 3.5%.
By doing so it entered a “bear market”, having fallen 20% from its record high in April 2015.
Oil prices remained weak on January 21, having hit their lowest levels since 2003 in the previous session.
A brief rally in crude prices quickly ran out of steam, and after climbing back above the $28-a-barrel mark, Brent crude fell back to $27.75.
US crude was 1% lower on the day, trading at $28.09 a barrel, having fallen below $27 on January 20.
Crude oil prices have been falling since mid 2014, but oil-producing countries have maintained output despite the decline, contributing to the excess supplies on the market.
Earlier in the week, the International Energy Agency warned that oil markets could “drown in oversupply” in 2016.
Europe’s stock markets have opened slightly higher 24 hours after global turmoil saw billions wiped off the value of shares.
London’s benchmark FTSE 100 share index, which measures the share prices of the 100 most valuable companies traded on the London stock exchange, was up 0.5% in the opening minutes.
Earlier, Japan’s main share index closed down by more than 2%.
Investors remain worried over the continuing slide in oil prices and slowing growth in China.
On January 20, global stock markets suffered hefty losses and London’s FTSE 100 lost 3.5%.
It has now entered a “bear market”, having fallen 20% from its record high in April 2015.
In the first few minutes of trade on January 21, the FTSE 100 was up 31.78 points at 5,705.36.
Oil prices remained weak on January 21, having hit their lowest levels since 2003 in the previous session.
A brief rally in crude prices quickly ran out of steam, and after climbing back above the $28-a-barrel mark, Brent crude fell back to $27.79.
US crude was trading at $28.23 a barrel, having fallen below $27 on January 20.
Crude oil prices have been falling since mid 2014, but oil-producing countries have maintained output despite the decline, contributing to the excess supplies on the market.
Earlier in the week, the International Energy Agency warned that oil markets could “drown in oversupply” in 2016.
In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 share index closed down 2.4%, while China’s Shanghai Composite ended the day down 3.2%.
On January 20, US shares had also been hit, with the Dow Jones closing 1.6% lower after a volatile trading day.
President Barack Obama has pledged his support to the city of Flint in Michigan in the water contamination crisis.
Speaking from nearby Detroit, Barack Obama said: “If I were a parent up there, I would be beside myself that my kid’s health could be at risk.”
Flint’s water became contaminated when lead leached from old pipes after a change in supplier in 2014.
Since then, residents have complained of bad smells, headaches and rashes.
Unable to drink tap water, the National Guard has joined volunteers in distributing lead tests, filters and bottled water.
Photo Flintwaterstudy.org
Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has faced calls to resign over the way he has handled the crisis.
On January 20 Rick Snyder released a batch of emails from 2014 and 2015 concerning the issue.
One email suggests that a day after doctors reported high levels of lead in local children, one of the governor’s top advisers told him city officials, not state officials, had to “deal with it”.
The switch to a river water source was a money-saving move when the city was under state financial management.
The water from Flint River stripped lead from the pipes and into the supply.
Lead exposure can cause learning disabilities and behavioral problems in children.
Last week, President Obama declared a state of emergency in Flint, which is predominantly an African-American, working-class city.
That declaration brought $5 million in federal aid but was far short of the $31 million requested by Republican governor Rick Snyder.
A day after meeting Flint Mayor Karen Weaver, Barack Obama said: “I told her we are going to have her back and all the people of Flint’s back as they work their way through this terrible tragedy.
“It is a reminder that we can’t short-change the basic services we provide to our people.”
Gov. Rick Snyder has urged President Obama to class the crisis as a federal disaster, saying its severity poses an “imminent and long-term threat” to residents.
By classing it as such, on the same level as natural disasters, Flint would be able to get much more federal aid.
In an interview this week, Gov. Snyder admitted it was a disaster but denied it was his “Katrina moment” – a reference to the much-criticized response of President George W. Bush to the hurricane that devastated New Orleans in 2005.
According to new figures, more Brazilian babies were born with abnormally small heads to mothers infected with the Zika virus.
There have been 3,893 cases of microcephaly since October, when the authorities first noticed a surge, up from 3,500 in last week’s report.
The Zika virus is transmitted by the bite of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which also spreads dengue and chikungunya.
Brazil is experiencing the largest known outbreak of Zika.
The Zika virus has already killed five babies in the country, said the health ministry. Another 44 deaths are being investigated to determine if they were caused by Zika.
Last week, the Brazilian Health Minister Marcelo Castro said a new testing kit was being developed to identify quickly the presence of either of the three viruses.
Marcelo Castro also announced extra funds to speed the development of a vaccine for Zika “in record time”.
Photo Wikipedia
At the moment the only way to fight Zika is to clear standing water where mosquitoes breed.
There has been a sharp rise in the number of cases of Zika in several other Latin American countries.
In Colombia, more than 13,500 cases have been reported.
“We are the second country [in Latin America] after Brazil in the number of reported cases,” said Health Minister Alejandro Gaviria.
He has advised women in the country not to get pregnant for the rest of the outbreak, which he said could last until July.
In Bolivia, the authorities have reported the first case of a pregnant woman diagnosed with Zika.
“She has not travelled outside the country. This is a home-grown case,” Joaquin Monasterio, director of Health Services for the eastern department of Santa Cruz told the AFP news agency.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued an alert on January 15 advising pregnant women to avoid travelling to Brazil and other Latin American and Caribbean countries where outbreaks of Zika have been registered.
The travel alert applies to Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname, Venezuela and Puerto Rico.
Astronomers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) say they have strong evidence that there is a ninth planet in our Solar System orbiting far beyond even the dwarf world Pluto.
The team has no direct observations to confirm its presence just yet.
Rather, the scientists make the claim based on the way other far-flung objects are seen to move.
If proven, the putative planet would have 10 times the mass of Earth.
The Caltech astronomers have a vague idea where it ought to be on the sky, and their work is sure to fire a campaign to try to track it down.
The group’s calculations suggest the object orbits 20 times farther from the Sun on average than does the eighth – and currently outermost – planet, Neptune, which moves about 4.5 billion km from our star.
Unlike the near-circular paths traced by the main planets, this novel object would be in a highly elliptical trajectory, taking between 10,000 and 20,000 years to complete one full lap around the Sun.
The Caltech group has analyzed the movements of objects in a band of far-off icy material known as the Kuiper Belt. It is in this band that Pluto resides.
The scientists say they see distinct alignments among some members of the Kuiper Belt – and in particular two of its larger members known as Sedna and 2012 VP113. These alignments, they argue, are best explained by the existence of a hitherto unidentified large planet.
The idea that there might be a so-called Planet X moving in the distant reaches of the Solar System has been debated for more than a hundred years.
The release of Star Wars: Episode VIII has been delayed until the end of 2017, Disney has announced.
The next installment of Star Wars saga was due to go on global release in May 2017 but instead will not be aired until the following December.
The new movie will follow The Force Awakens, which is still showing and has become the biggest-grossing movie in US history.
In the five weeks since its release, The Force Awakens has earned $861 million in the US and $1.88 billion globally.
Disney did not say why Star Wars: Episode VIII had been delayed but there had been speculation that the script was being rewritten.
Production is set to begin next month at Pinewood Studios, west of London.
The new release date means Episode VIII could come up against another long-awaited blockbuster, Avatar 2, which is set for Christmas 2017 but could be further delayed.
Despite the bad news concerning the postponement, Star Wars fans have the consolation of the spin-off Rogue One, which is due out in December 2016.
Abba’s members have reunited for the opening of a new business venture in the capital Stockholm.
The dining-entertainment venue, based on the Greek taverna featured in the Abba-themed film Mamma Mia!, is the idea of Abba star Bjorn Ulvaeus.
Bjorn Ulvaeus was joined for the opening night by Benny Andersson, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, and Agnetha Faltskog.
They were last seen in public together in 2008, news website thelocal.se said.
Fans and guests paid 1,340 kronor ($157) for a ticket to the opening night of Mamma Mia! The Party at the Tyrol restaurant in Grona Lund, Stockholm, on January 20, it added.
The venue’s website says punters will enjoy a Mediterranean-style buffet while the show takes place.
“Everything happens on a magical evening in several acts filled with singing and dancing, daredevil stunts, Greek Gods, flirty waiters, and perhaps a zorba and an ouzo or two,” it says.
“No evening is like any other and no-one knows how it ends. It all depends on where Abba’s songs take us.”
The four Abba stars were last seen in public together for the movie premieres of Mamma Mia! in London and Stockholm in 2008, thelocal.se said.
Global stock markets have tumbled with investors unsettled by the continued slide in oil prices and fears about the impact on global growth.
Germany’s Dax, the UK’s FTSE 100, and the Cac 40 in Paris were all down by about 3%, wiping out the gains recorded on January 19.
The drop in the FTSE puts it on the brink of a so called “bear market” – a 20% fall from April’s all-time high.
The falls came after Asian stocks closed sharply lower.
Dubai markets closed at a 28-month low, while in Japan shares fell to their lowest level since October 2014.
Top emerging market shares and currencies were also caught up in the turmoil, with the Russian ruble hitting a new record low of 80.295 against the dollar.
The downwards move came after oil prices continued to slide, with the price of international benchmark Brent Crude down 2.4% at $28.08 a barrel, around a 12-year low.
The oil price has plummeted 75% since mid-2014 as oversupply, mainly due to US shale oil flooding the market, has driven down the cost of the commodity.
At the same time, demand has fallen because of a slowdown in economic growth in China and Europe.
The world’s energy watchdog warned on January 19 that the market could “drown in oversupply”.
The International Energy Agency, which advises countries on energy policy, said it expected the global glut to last until at least late 2016.
The IMF’s decision on January 19 to downgrade its global growth forecast for this year and issue a warning about the outlook added to the dark mood among investors.
World stocks are now at their lowest levels since 2013, with the MSCI world equity index down 9.9% in January, its biggest drop since 2009.
Analysts said they expected the volatility to continue.
The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been destroyed by ISIS, satellite images confirmed.
St. Elijah’s monastery, or Dair Mar Elia, stood on a hill near the northern city of Mosul for 1,400 years.
Now, St. Elijah’s has joined a growing list of more than 100 demolished religious and historic sites, including mosques, tombs, shrines and churches in Syria and Iraq. The extremists have defaced or ruined ancient monuments in Nineveh, Palmyra and Hatra. Museums and libraries have been looted, books burned, artwork crushed – or trafficked.
Analysts said the images, obtained by the Associated Press, suggested St. Elijah’s had been demolished in late 2014, soon after ISIS seized Mosul.
Photo Flickr
A Catholic priest from Mosul warned that its Christian history was “being barbarically leveled”.
“We see it as an attempt to expel us from Iraq, eliminating and finishing our existence in this land,” said Father Paul Thabit Habib, who now lives in Kurdish-administered Irbil.
ISIS has targeted Christians in Iraq and neighboring Syria, seizing their property and forcing them to convert to Islam, pay a special tax or flee.
The group has also demolished a number of monasteries and churches, as well as renowned pre-Islamic sites including Nimrud, Hatra and Nineveh in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria.
St. Elijah’s Monastery was believed to have been constructed by Assyrian monks in the late 6th Century. It was later claimed by a Chaldean Catholic order.
In 1743, its monks were given an ultimatum by Persian forces to convert to Islam. They refused and as many as 150 were massacred.
A Florida mansion once owned by Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar is being demolished.
The mansion’s new owners have hired professional treasure hunters to comb through the rubble in the hope of finding items belonging to the former leader of the Medellin cartel.
The pink mansion in Miami Beach was seized by the US government in 1987.
Pablo Escobar, who was one of the world’s richest men at the time of his death, was killed by Colombian police in 1993.
Christian de Berdouare and his wife Jennifer Valoppi said they were unaware of its history when they bought the four-bedroom mansion from a private owner in 2014.
Pablo Escobar bought the mansion in 1980 and had it for seven years before it was seized by the US authorities.
The new owners said Pablo Escobar never lived there but had visited the property on occasion.
They have hired a team to search for stashes of drugs, money or jewellery, which they suspect may have been hidden inside the mansion or its garden, as was the custom of members of the Medellin cartel.
Jennifer Valoppi said the workers had found a buried safe but that it was stolen before they could open it.
“It was in the ground under some marble and was discovered by some of our workers, but before we even had a chance to remove it, it was stolen, so we’ve been working with police on that,” she said.
Christian de Berdouare, who paid just under $10 million for the mansion, said he was “very excited to see the house of the devil disappearing right before our eyes”.
“This was the biggest criminal in the history of the world. I would like to be associated with something more uplifting, but nevertheless it’s part of the city,” he added.
He said that he believed Pablo Escobar bought the mansion in a residential neighborhood in order “to conduct illicit trade”. He plans to build a new mansion on the site.
Miami was a key entry point for drugs flooding in from South America in the 1980s and many drug lords had mansions and luxury apartments in the city.
The Miami mansion was built in 1948 and has direct access to Biscayne Bay and views of the Miami skyline.
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, has signed a $5 million deal for an Ebola vaccine, to protect against future outbreaks of the deadly disease.
The deal commits pharmaceutical company Merck to keeping 300,000 vaccines ready for emergency use or further clinical trials.
It will also submit an application to license the vaccine by the end of 2017, which would the next step towards enabling Gavi to prepare a global stockpile.
More than 11,000 people have died in the latest Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
The sheer scale of the outbreak – the largest in history – led to an unprecedented push on vaccines, which condensed a decade’s work into less than a year.
Merck has led trials of the VSV-EBOV vaccine – which combines a fragment of the Ebola virus with another safer virus in order to train the immune system to beat Ebola.
Early evidence from studies in West Africa suggest it may give 100% protection, although more data is still being collected.
Gavi CEO Dr. Seth Berkley said: “The suffering caused by the Ebola crisis was a wake-up call to many in the global health community.
“New threats require smart solutions, and our innovative financing agreement with Merck will ensure that we are ahead of the curve for future Ebola outbreaks.”
Gavi is an alliance of public bodies and companies committed to saving lives through vaccination.
It announced the advanced-purchase commitment at the World Economic Forum held at Davos in the Swiss Alps.
The $5 million paid to Merck will be offset against any vaccines Gavi orders once the shot is licensed.
The World Health Organization declared West Africa Ebola-free last week, after all of the affected countries had gone 42 days without a case.
However, just hours later, a death in Sierra Leone was confirmed to be from Ebola.
At least 19 people were killed and 50 injured in a gun and bomb attack on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, north-west Pakistan.
Four suspected attackers were killed in a battle that lasted nearly three hours.
Security forces continued to secure the campus, checking classrooms and dormitories, amid fears more bodies would be found.
There are conflicting reports about whether the Taliban militants carried out the assault
The group killed 130 students at a school in the city of Peshawar, 30 miles from Charsadda, in 2014.
About 3,000 students are enrolled at Bacha Khan but hundreds of visitors were also expected on January 20 for a poetry event.
Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif said in a statement, quoted by Reuters news agency: “We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland.”
Attackers struck at around 09:30 local time, reportedly climbing over a back wall under cover of the thick winter fog.
Intense gunfire and explosions were heard as security guards fought the attackers.
Students and staff ran to find cover in toilets and examination halls.
Images from inside the university show a pool of blood on the floor of a dormitory and the charred corpses of two alleged militants lying on a staircase.
Nineteen bodies were taken to a local mortuary. It was not immediately clear if the attackers were among them.
A senior Taliban commander, Umar Mansoor, told media that the attack was in response to a military offensive against militant strongholds. He said four suicide attackers had carried out the attack.
The university is located in an open area some distance east of Charsadda town, surrounded by open agricultural fields.
Bacha Khan is a new university, founded in 2012, its website says.
Just days ago, some schools in Peshawar were closed by the authorities amid reports that militants were planning an attack.
ISIS has confirmed the British militant Mohammed Emwazi known as Jihadi John died in a drone strike in November 2015.
The Islamic State group’s online propaganda magazine Dabiq published an obituary for the jihadist.
In November the US military said it was “reasonably certain” it had killed him in the ISIS-stronghold of Raqqa.
Mohammed Emwazi appeared in beheading videos of victims including UK aid worker David Haines and taxi driver Alan Henning.
In the eulogy, Kuwaiti-born Mohammed Emwazi is referred to as Abu Muharib al-Muhajir, his nickname in the group and the details of his death confirm the US version of events.
The jihadist group said Jihadi John was killed on November 12 “as the car he was in was targeted in a strike by an unmanned drone in the city of Raqqa, destroying the car and killing him instantly”.
A smiling picture of the militant, who appears unmasked looking towards the ground, accompanies the text, which is written in tribute form to a man they describe as an “honorable brother”.
Mohammed Emwazi first emerged in August 2014 when he appeared masked in a video in which US journalist James Foley was apparently murdered.
Dubbed “Jihadi John” by the media, he was identified as Mohammed Emwazi, a computer programming graduate who grew up in London, in February 2015.
Jihadi John also appeared in videos of the beheadings of American journalist Steven Sotloff, David Haines, Alan Henning, as well as American aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, also known as Peter, and Japanese journalist Kenji Goto.
He became a top target for US and British intelligence agencies, even though he is thought to have played no military role within ISIS.
At the time of Jihadi John’s reported death in November, UK’s PM David Cameron said targeting Mohammed Emwazi had been “the right thing to do”.
He said the UK had been working with its US allies “literally around the clock” to track Mohammed Emwazi down.
Three drones – one British and two American – were involved in the strike. One of the American drones hit the car, and it is believed there was one other person in the vehicle.
According to Pyongyang reports, North Korean scientists have invented a hangover-free alcohol.
The state-run Pyongyang Times says the “suave” liquor will spare you wincing when you wake, despite boasting 30%-40% alcohol.
The brew is reportedly made from a type of indigenous ginseng called insam and glutinous rice, and cultivated by an organic farming method.
North Korean media is known for making often outlandish claims about its domestic achievements.
In 2015, North Korea said medical products containing extracts from the insam plant could cure MERS, SARS and even AIDS.
Photo AP
The Pyongyang Times said the new alcohol “exudes national flavor”, without dampening your national fervor the following morning.
Among its other unique selling points, according to the paper – the spirit “is highly appreciated by experts and lovers”.
The newspaper article, titled, Liquor wins quality medal for preserving national smack, says the Taedonggang Foodstuff Factory has been working for years on the elixir.
The drink derives from Kaesong Koryo insam – a natural herb thought to have medicinal properties. According to the Pyongyang Times, replacing sugar with the scorched, glutinous rice removed the bitterness from the insam and, crucially, the hangover.
“Koryo Liquor, which is made of six-year-old Kaesong Koryo insam, known as being highest in medicinal effect, and the scorched rice, is highly appreciated by experts and lovers as it is suave and causes no hangover,” the article reads.
The liquor “has already been registered as a national scientific and technological hit”, it adds.
Sarah Palin has announced her endorsement for Donald Trump’s presidential bid.
The populist ex-governor of Alaska was the Republican vice-presidential candidate in 2008.
“Are you ready to stump for Trump?” Sarah Palin asked cheering supporters at a campaign rally in Iowa.
Sarah Palin was John McCain’s running mate in 2008 before they lost to Barack Obama.
Despite retiring from politics in favor of a media career, Sarah Palin remains an influential conservative voice.
Officially announcing her endorsement, Sarah Palin said Donald Trump was someone ready to let US troops “kick ISIS’ ass”.
“We are ready for a change,” she told the rally in Ames, Iowa.
“He [DonaldTrump] is beholden to no one but ‘we, the people’. He is perfectly positioned to let you make America great again.”
Donald Trump, who leads the Republican race, said in a statement that he was “proud” to receive Sarah Palin’s backing.
She was a “trusted conservative” with a “proven record of being fiscally modest, staunchly pro-life and [she] believes in small government that allows businesses to grow and freedom to prosper”, the statement added.
Sarah Palin was just two years into her Alaskan governorship when she was picked by John McCain to be his running mate.
The self-described “hockey mom” soon garnered huge crowds and massive media attention.
After the election in 2009, Sarah Palin resigned as Alaska governor and has since forged a lucrative career as a writer and political commentator.
Ahead of the announcement, Sarah Palin tweeted a link to an article by her daughter Bristol attacking Donald Trump’s main rival for the key Iowa caucus, Ted Cruz.
Iowa is the first chance for voters to have their say in the nomination race.
Ted Cruz has himself praised Sarah Palin saying “without her support, I wouldn’t be in the Senate” – a reference to her backing that helped him to his surprise victory in a 2012 Senate run-off election.
“Regardless of what she does in 2016, I will always be a big fan,” Ted Cruz tweeted.
Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s campaign team tweeted caustically after the announcement to Sarah Palin “congrats to the YouTube commenter who wrote your remarks”.
One of President Barack Obama’s key immigration reform plans could be challenged by the Supreme Court.
The plan would lift the threat of deportation from 5 million migrants living illegally in the US.
A coalition of 26 mostly conservative states, led by Texas, has been successful in lower court challenges.
A decision from the Supreme Court is expected in the early summer, just as the election gets into full swing.
“We are confident that the policies will be upheld as lawful,” said White House spokeswoman Brandi Hoffine.
President Barack Obama announced the plan, known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA), in November 2014.
He justified using his presidential powers, without Congress, by saying it was in response to inaction over the issue of immigration from Congress.
If allowed to go forward, it would allow people who have lived in the US for more than five years and who have children who are living in the country legally to apply for work authorization.
In announcing the plan, Barack Obama said it would allow those who qualify to “come out of the shadows and get right with the law”.
Challenges to the plan began shortly after President Barack Obama’s announcement, with a federal court in Texas effectively putting a pause on it in February.
The Obama administration lost an appeal in November, keeping the injunction in place.
The White House has vowed to kickstart the program if the Supreme Court was to rule in its favor, so that migrants could began enrolling before a new president takes office in January 2017.
One of the largest questions looming over the case is whether the state challengers have the right to do so.
Texas argues it will have to spend millions of dollars to provide driver’s licenses to people who are part of the program.
The issue of immigration has become a controversial and polarizing issue in the 2016 presidential race.
Leading Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has said she would maintain and expand President Barack Obama’s reforms, while Republican front runner Donald Trump has said he would reverse the reforms and step up enforcement.
Prince Harry is reportedly dating Princess Maria-Olympia of Greece and Denmark.
According to Australian publication New Idea, the duo had been introduced by the Prince Harry’s cousin, Princess Beatrice, and the romance had the approval of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
The 19-year-old fashionista is the daughter of Crown Prince Pavlov of Greece and his elegant wife Marie-Chantal.
Princess Maria-Olympia was born on 25 July 1996 in New York City – the first of five children and the only girl. The couple moved to London when Olympia was 7 so that their children could grow up near Prince Pavlov’s parents, former Greek monarch King Constantine and Queen Anne Marie.
The move also had the happy result of bringing her closer to godfather Prince Charles.
King Constantine is Prince Charles’ second cousin and the godfather of Prince William. Other royal relatives include Princess Olympia’s great aunts, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and Queen Sofia of Spain.
When Olpympia’s parents wed at Hampton Court Palace in 1995, the guest list was filled with impressively regal names and the bride wore pearl-entrusted Valentino.
Along with her mother, an American heiress from the wealthy Miller family, Princess Maria-Olympia is a regular on the front rows at fashion week.
A fire broke out on the top floor of the world’s most famous hotel, the five-star Ritz in Paris.
The fire is now under control.
About 150 workers had to leave the building on January 19 as the fire took hold. No injuries are reported.
Ritz hotel – which is famously where Princess Diana spent her last evening – is currently closed for renovations and there are no guests staying there.
The operation will take “a long time” as the fire is difficult to access, a fire service spokesman said.
The alert was raised at 07:00 local time and about 60 firefighters and 15 fire engines were sent to the scene.
The fire started on the seventh floor, took hold in the attic and spread to the roof.
Paris police tweeted that there was a “major fire”, and advised motorists to avoid the Place Vendome area.
Photo Getty Images
The area was blocked off at the height of the morning rush hour, while firefighters on cranes sprayed the flames.
Fire captain Yvon Bot said the fire was unusually difficult to access and control.
“There is no longer any risk of it spreading, but the operation will still take a very long time,” he said.
“We are having to go meter by meter from the roof. It is too small to access from the interior.”
Yvon Bot said a “large” section of the building was affected.
The Ritz is a historic building in central Paris.
Princess Diana dined there on August 30, 1997. Later that night she and her companion Dodi al-Fayed were killed in a car crash. Dodi al-Fayed was the son of the hotel’s owner, Egyptian billionaire and Harrods owner Mohamed al-Fayed.
The Ritz was also the hotel of choice for Charlie Chaplin, Coco Chanel and Ernest Hemingway.
The hotel was due to re-open in March after a three-year closure for multi-million euro renovations.
The Ritz name, used for hotels around the world, comes from a Swiss hotelier called Cesar Ritz, who set up the Paris Ritz and the London Ritz more than a century ago. Both hotels are now independently owned.
Twitter is offline for many users, with web visitors being greeted by an error page.
Some mobile users are also unable to read or post tweets to the social network, which has over 300 million active members.
Twitter chose to communicate the problem via a tweet, in which the company said it was aware of the problem.
Some users took to Facebook to complain.
A spokesman for Twitter said that a tweet from the company’s @support account read: “Some users are currently experiencing problems accessing Twitter. We are aware of the issue and are working towards a resolution.”
According to Down Detector, the issue began shortly after 08:00 GMT.
For some users, the site appears to be intermittently accessible while the issue persists.
There were also issues with Twitter’s application program interface (API), which allows websites and apps to connect to Twitter.
Recently launched apps might not have been able to take advantage of live feedback on the site, something which Barclays took advantage of following the launch of the bank’s PingIt payments app in 2015.
Renault, which has been under the spotlight over high levels of harmful emissions, has decided to recall 15,000 new diesel cars.
The move comes after tests showed emission levels from some of the French automaker’s cars were too high.
Last week, three of Renault’s sites were raided by fraud investigators.
The searches led to billions of euros being wiped off its market value, after fears that it could be another scandal similar to that at Volkswagen.
Renault has promised to come up with a “technical plan” to bring down the level of emissions from its vehicles.
French Energy Minister Segolene Royal said Renault was not the only car company in France to break the rules on carbon dioxide and nitrogen emissions, but she did not name the others involved.
Segolene Royal said the tests needed to be based on real driving conditions and not those of special testing facilities. It has been suggested that the emission readings are much lower in laboratory-style conditions.
“Renault has committed to recalling a certain number of vehicles, more than 15,000 vehicles, to check them and adjust them correctly so the filtration system works even when it is very hot or when it is below 17 degrees, because that’s when the filtration system no longer worked,” Segolene Royal said.
“We are working on a technical plan which should allow us to cut emissions,” Renault sales director Thierry Koskas said during a presentation on the group’s 2015 sales performance.
When asked how the test results differed from those conducted under real conditions, Thierry Koskas said: “Renault did not cheat… We are not using any software or other methods.”
Kate del Castillo has been called in for questioning over her links with the imprisoned Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
The Mexican actress set up a meeting in October between El Chapo Guzman, who was then on the run, and Sean Penn.
Kate del Castillo and El Chapo Guzman exchanged dozens of messages before she and Sean Penn met him in northern Mexico.
El Chapo (Shorty) Guzman was arrested on January 8, six months after escaping from a high security jail.
The lord was captured by Mexican troops in the northern city of Los Mochis and taken back to the Altiplano prison.
Mexican authorities are considering El Chapo Guzman’s extradition to the US. In the meantime, they say he is being kept under 24-hour surveillance to prevent another escape.
Photo YouTube
Sean Penn interviewed El Chapo Guzman for Rolling Stone magazine.
The contact between Kate del Castillo and El Chapo Guzman helped Mexican police establish his whereabouts and eventually capture him.
Attorney General Arely Gomez said the security forces had been following El Chapo Guzman’s lawyer, who led them to Sean Penn and Kate del Castillo.
Mobile phone exchanges between Kate del Castillo and El Chapo Guzman reveal that he initially did not know who Sean Penn was.
He seemed to be infatuated by the actress, who is famous in Mexico.
Kate del Castillo is best known for her portrayal of drug boss Teresa Mendoza in the soap opera La Reina del Sur (Queen of the South).
El Chapo Guzman was planning to get Hollywood to produce a movie about his life.
Kate del Castillo persuaded El Chapo Guzman that Sean Penn had the experience and connections to realize his dream.
“I don’t have the means to pay for what you’re doing for me,” he wrote, according to transcripts obtained by El Universal newspaper.
Responding to rumors that she had become too close to El Chapo Guzman, Kate del Castillo tweeted on January 13 that she would tell her side of the story.
“As expected, many people have decided to manipulate the information and fabricate false stories to divert us from the real issue,” she wrote.
“I will soon give you my version.”
Mexican prosecutors said Kate del Castillo, who is in the US, will be allowed to be questioned at the embassy in Los Angeles.
El Chapo Guzman was Mexico’s most wanted man.
He was the founder of the Sinaloa drug cartel, which smuggled vast amounts of illegal drugs into the US.
El Chapo Guzman is linked to other crimes, including murder and extortion.
The Chinese economy grew by 6.9% in 2015, compared with 7.3% in 2014, marking its slowest growth in 25 years.
China’s growth, seen as a driver of the global economy, is a major concern for investors around the world.
The government had set an official growth target of “about 7%” for the world’s second-largest economy.
PM Li Keqiang has said weaker growth would be acceptable as long as enough new jobs were created.
However, some observers say its growth is actually much weaker than official data suggests, though Beijing denies numbers are being inflated.
Analysts said any growth below 6.8% would likely fuel calls for further economic stimulus. Economic growth in Q4 of 2015 edged down to 6.8%, according to China’s national bureau of statistics.
After experiencing rapid growth for more than a decade, China’s economy has experienced a painful slowdown in the last two years.
Some argue that China’s focus on creating an economy driven by consumption is misplaced. They say as the country attempts to rebalance its economy, it should focus on productivity in order to sustain high growth.
Tougher aviation laws against unruly air passengers have been enacted in South Korea, after the so-called nut rage scandal which saw top Korean Air executive Heather Cho jailed.
Under the new rules, passengers will pay a higher fine if they disturb the pilot. Transport officials say they revised laws because of public demand.
Heather Cho – also known as Cho Hyun-ah – was convicted in February 2015 after ordering a taxiing plane back to offload a steward who served the nuts in a way she deemed inappropriate.
The case attracted global attention.
In South Korea it reopened a national debate about elitism and the Korean business system, which is dominated by family firms known as chaebols.
Besides being the vice-president at Korean Air at that time, Heather Cho is the daughter of the airline’s chairman.
Photo AP
During the incident Heather Cho was angered that she was given macadamia nuts which she did not ask for, and was offended that they were served in a bag, not in a bowl.
After confronting flight staff, Heather Cho ordered the plane which was taxiing at New York’s JFK Airport to turn back and offload the chief steward.
Under the new law, passed by parliamentarians in 2015, anyone who disturbs the pilot during a flight could face up to five years in prison or a 50 million won ($41,200) fine.
Previously the same offence did not have a jail term and only had a 5 million won fine. Crew members are also now compelled to hand over unruly passengers to the police, or risk a 10 million won fine.
“The amended law reflects mounting public demand for enhanced aviation safety and the prevention of unruly behavior during flight following the Korean Air nut rage incident,” the transport ministry said in a press statement.
Heather Cho was convicted of violating airline safety. She served five months in jail before she was freed in May after an appeals court overturned the ruling saying she did not cause a change in flight path. Another conviction of using violence against flight attendants still stands.
