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.
Chris Harper Mercer, who is accused of killing nine people at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, left behind a manifesto detailing his grievances.
The gunman opened fire on October 1 inside a classroom at Umpqua Community College and then killed himself when police arrived.
A police source told the Associated Press that Chris Harper Mercer complained in the document about not having a girlfriend.
The gunman also wrote that everyone else was “crazy” and that he was the sane one.
Chris Harper Mercer, 26, is also said to have written that other mass killers “were denied everything they deserved and wanted” before going on to say he did not believe anything could “make me realize I had so much going for me”, People magazine reported, quoting a source close to the investigation.
Meanwhile President Barack Obama announced on October 5 that he would travel to Roseburg, Oregon, on October 9 to visit survivors and relatives of the victims.
Chris Harper Mercer lived with his mother, Laurel Margaret Harper, in an apartment a few miles from the college.
Police have interviewed Laurel Margaret Harper and she told them that her son had been suffering from mental problems.
Laurel Margaret Harper, a nurse, posted on websites over past several years about the difficulties of having a son with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism that she also suffered from.
The mother wrote that Chris Harper Mercer used to bang his head against the wall and that she also attempted to counsel other parents whose children had similar difficulties, the New York Times reported.
Laurel Margaret Harper also wrote about her son’s knowledge of firearms, saying he was her main source of information about guns and revealing they kept Kalashnikov and Armalite semi-automatic rifles and a Glock handgun in the house.
Police recovered a total of 14 firearms and spare ammunition magazines that had been bought legally by Chris Harper Mercer or a relative.
The gunman had six guns with him when he began his attack and the rest were found at his home, the newspaper reported.
Chris Harper Mercer had been discharged from the US Army in 2008 after failing to complete basic training. According to online postings, he had been in search of a girlfriend.
YouTuber Caleb Logan Bratayley has died at the age of 13, his family confirmed.
Caleb Logan was part of The Bratayley YouTube channel.
His mother, Katie Bratayley, announced the news on her Instagram page, saying Caleb “passed away of natural causes”.
She wrote: “Yesterday at 7:08PM Caleb Logan Bratayley passed away of natural causes. This has come as a shock to all of us. Words cannot describe how much we will miss him. His incredibly funny, loving and wonderful spirit made us all fall in love with him as a YouTuber, friend, brother and son. We know you tune in to watch each day and eagerly anticipate new videos, but ask that you bear with us while we deal with this tragedy as a family. Please help us honor our baked potato.”
Caleb Logan Bratayley, along with his younger sisters, had more than a million subscribers on YouTube.
Photo Pinterest
The Brataleys, whose channel focuses on the family’s day-to-day life, started uploading videos in 2010 and have since had a billion views.
The family has shared on their YouTube channel the last video made of Caleb before his death.
In it he answers the question, what would you ask your future self?
Caleb replies: “Is Taco Bell still around?”
At the end of the video, a caption appears reading: “Unfortunately Caleb passed away the day after this video was made.
“He will never get to meet his future self. None of us will and we are very sad because he would have been great.
“Please kiss your kids and tell them you love them every day. You never know what day will be their last.”
Maker Studios, the Disney company which has helped manage The Bratayleys, also confirmed Caleb’s death, tweeting: “We are heartbroken at the tragic loss of Caleb from Bratayley, a beloved member of the Maker family.”
No further information has been shared detailing the cause of Caleb Logan Bratayley’s death.
Hillary Clinton has unveiled her plan for new gun control laws in the wake of the deadly Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon.
The Democratic presidential hopeful proposes abolishing legislation that protects gun makers and dealers from being sued by shooting victims.
Hillary Clinton also vowed to use executive powers as president to expand background checks at gun shows and ban domestic abusers from purchasing guns.
The issue of gun control is a hugely divisive issue in the US.
Hillary Clinton’s announcement comes after a deadly shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, last week left eight students and a teacher dead.
She told a rally in New Hampshire: “I will try every way I can to get those guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.
“We need to prevent these kinds of terrible crimes that are happening.”
Hillary Clinton’s stance means she is going further in toughening the law than her Democratic rival Bernie Sanders, who has called for “sensible gun-control legislation”.
The father of the gunman, Christopher Harper Mercer, who killed himself during an exchange with police, has called for more gun control in the US.
“I’m not trying to say that that’s to blame for what happened, but if Chris had not been able to get hold of 13 guns, this wouldn’t have happened,” he told CNN.
Republican rivals insist that restricting gun access will not do anything to prevent mass shootings.
Jeb Bush said “more government” is not the answer to tragedies.
“There’s always a crisis and the impulse is always to do something, and it’s not necessarily the right thing to do,” he said.
Donald Trump said the shooting was “another mental health problem”.
Customer data at seven of Donald Trump’s hotels may have been stolen after their payment systems were hacked for over a year.
The Trump Hotel Collection said on its website that hackers gained access to its systems between May 2014 and June 2015 at the front desk of those hotels, AP reported.
Hotel restaurants and gift shops were also hacked.
The hotel operator said an independent forensic investigation has not found any evidence of customer’s information being misused. The company is offering affected customers a year of free identity theft protection.
According to AP, the potential thefts occurred at the Trump SoHo New York, Trump International New York, Trump National Doral in Miami, Trump International Chicago, Trump International Waikiki in Hawaii, Trump International Hotel and Tower Las Vegas and Trump International Toronto.
Donald Trump is chairman and president of Trump Hotel Collection and three of his children have executive roles.
Trump Hotel said it is working with the Secret Service and the FBI to help “catch these criminals and prosecute them to the full extent of the law”.
This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2015 was awarded with one half jointly to William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura for their discoveries concerning a novel therapy against infections caused by roundworm parasites and the other half to Youyou Tu for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against Malaria.
William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura found a new way of tackling infections caused by roundworm parasites.
Youyou Tu shares the prize for her discovery of a therapy against malaria.
The Nobel committee said the work had changed the lives of hundreds of millions of people affected by these diseases.
The mosquito-borne disease malaria kills more than 450,000 people each year around the world, with billions more at risk of catching the infection.
Parasitic worms affect a third of the world’s population and cause a number of illnesses, including river blindness and lymphatic filariasis.
Photo NobelPrize.org
After decades of limited progress, the discovery of the two new drugs – ivermectin for river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, and artemisinin for malaria – was a game-changer.
Efforts to eradicate malaria had been failing – older drugs were losing their potency – and the disease was on the rise.
Prof. Youyou Tu, who in the 1960s had recently graduated from the Pharmacy Department at Beijing Medical University, looked to traditional herbal medicine to find a potential therapy.
She took an extract from the plant called Artemisia annua, or sweet wormwood, and began testing it on malaria parasites.
The component, later called artemisinin, was highly effective at killing them.
Today, the drug is used around the world in combination with other malaria medicines. In Africa alone, this is saving more than 100,000 lives every year.
Youyou Tu is the 13th woman to win this Nobel Prize.
She shares the award with two men who found a treatment for another parasite – roundworm.
Their research led to the development of a drug called ivermectin, which is so successful that roundworm diseases are on the verge of eradication.
Satoshi Ōmura, a Japanese microbiologist, focused on studying microbes in soil samples. He selected a number of promising candidates that he though might work as a weapon against diseases.
Irish-born William C. Campbell, an expert in parasite biology working in the US, then explored these further and found one was remarkably efficient against parasites.
The active ingredient, avermectin, went on to become a drug known as ivermectin which is now used to treat river blindness and lymphatic filariasis.
River blindness is an eye and skin disease that ultimately leads to blindness. Lymphatic filariasis, also known as elephantiasis, causes painful swelling of the limbs. Both affect people living in some of the poorest countries in the world.
The Nobel committee said: “The two discoveries have provided humankind with powerful new means to combat these debilitating diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people annually.
“The consequences in terms of improved human health and reduced suffering are immeasurable.”
Satoshi Omura told Japanese broadcaster NHK: “I have learned so much from microorganisms and I have depended on them, so I would much rather give the prize to microorganisms.
“This is kind of a low-profile research area, but microorganisms are extremely important for humans. They can be our partners. I hope the area gets more attention because of the prize so that it can further contribute to human beings.”
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – the world’s biggest ever trade deal – was signed into existence on October 5.
The TPP cuts trade tariffs and sets common standards in trade for 12 Pacific rim countries, including the United States and Japan.
It marks the end of five years of often bitter and tense negotiations.
The deal covers about 40% of the world economy and was signed after five days of talks in Atlanta in the US.
Supporters say it could be worth billions of dollars to the countries involved but critics say it was negotiated in secret and is biased towards corporations.
Despite the success of the negotiations, the deal still has to be ratified by lawmakers in each country.
For President Barack Obama, the trade deal is a major victory.
He said: “This partnership levels the playing field for our farmers, ranchers, and manufacturers by eliminating more than 18,000 taxes that various countries put on our products.”
Senator Bernie Sanders, a Democratic presidential candidate, said: “Wall Street and other big corporations have won again.”
Bernie Sanders said the deal would cost US jobs and hurt consumers and that he would “do all that I can to defeat this agreement” in Congress.
China was not involved in the agreement, and the Obama administration is hoping it will be forced to accept most of the standards laid down by TTP.
He said: “When more than 95% of our potential customers live outside our borders, we can’t let countries like China write the rules of the global economy.
“We should write those rules, opening new markets to American products while setting high standards for protecting workers and preserving our environment.”
Japan’s PM Shinzo Abe told reporters the deal was a “major outcome not just for Japan but also for the future of the Asia-Pacific” region.
The final round of talks was delayed by negotiations over how long pharmaceutical corporations should be allowed to keep a monopoly period on their drugs.
The US wanted 12 years of protection, saying that by guaranteeing revenues over a long period it encouraged companies to invest in new research.
Australia, New Zealand and several public health groups argued for five years before allowing cheaper generic or “copy-cat” into the market.
They said a shorter patent would bring down drug costs for health services and bring lifesaving medicine to poorer patients.
Even though a compromise was reached, no definitive protection period was confirmed.
Speaking at a press conference following the deal, US Trade Representative Michael Froman hailed the deal as the first to set a period of protection for patents on new drugs, which he said would “incentivize” drug producers.
However, the Washington-based Biotechnology Industry Association said it was “very disappointed” by the reports that the agreement fell short of the 12-year protections sought by the US.
The auto industry was another area of intense negotiation with countries agonizing over how much of a vehicle had to be manufactured within the TPP countries in order to qualify for duty-free status.
Agriculture proved another sticking point with countries like New Zealand wanting more access to markets in Canada, Mexico, Japan and the US.
Canada meanwhile fought to keep access to its domestic dairy and poultry markets strictly limited. The issue and its impact on rural voters is particularly sensitive ahead of the federal election in two weeks time.
According to new reports, at least 19 people have been found dead following flash floods on the French Riviera.
The death toll rose after two bodies were discovered on October 5. One person remains missing but another was found alive, according to reports.
Violent storms and heavy rain on Saturday evening sent torrents of water and mud through several towns.
A Briton, an Italian woman and a Portuguese man were also among those killed, AFP said.
French President Francois Hollande has announced a state of “natural disaster” in the affected region.
Forecasters have faced criticism over the effectiveness of weather alerts.
The area is estimated to have received more than 10% of its average yearly rainfall in two days alone. Rivers burst their banks, sending water coursing into nearby towns and cities.
Photo Reuters
Divers found one body in the worst-hit town of Mandelieu-la-Napoule on October 5.
Eight are now confirmed killed there after being trapped in garages when they tried to remove their cars, officials say.
Three elderly people drowned when their retirement home in Biot, near the city of Antibes, was flooded.
Visiting the home on October 4, President Francois Hollande offered his condolences and urged residents to remain cautious, saying: “It’s not over.”
Hundreds of volunteers have been helping clear debris and clean homes affected.
Thousands of homes remained without electricity on October 5 following the floods.
Meanwhile Bernard Giampaolo, director of the Marineland amusement park in Antibes, said three loggerhead turtles were still missing after the enclosures were hit.
He told Nice Matin newspaper that polar bears, orcas and dolphins had survived, although the park was still without power.
Chickens, goats and sheep had been washed away, the newspaper reported.
According to German media, the number of refugees seeking asylum in Germany this year will be as high as 1.5 million – almost double the previous estimate.
The German government has not confirmed the new estimate, which comes from an internal official report cited by popular daily Bild.
The report warns that services helping refugees will not be able to cope.
Separately, a centre-right regional minister put the expected total at 1.2-1.5 million for 2015.
The German government previously estimated the number of asylum claims this year to reach 800,000 to one million in total.
Many are refugees fleeing the wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, but there are also many economic migrants from the Balkans, Asia and Africa.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres has warned that Europe, in dealing with the migration crisis, is engaged in a “battle of compassion versus fear, and of tolerance versus xenophobia”.
Speaking in Geneva, Antonio Guterres said the world was facing the highest levels of forced displacement in recorded history and the principle of asylum must remain sacrosanct.
He urged Europe to defend “its founding values of tolerance and openness by welcoming refugees of all religions”.
The leaders of Hungary and Slovakia have said the influx of Muslims is a challenge to Europe’s “Christian” identity.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is to meet EU leaders in Brussels shortly to discuss the Syria crisis, which has fuelled an exodus of Syrians to the EU via Turkey.
Greek islands near the Turkish coast are overburdened with migrants, many of them Syrians determined to reach Germany. The crisis has strained EU relations with Turkey, a mainly Muslim country.
On October 4, several thousand Germans opposed to mass immigration demonstrated in two eastern towns – Plauen and Sebnitz – after a call to action by the anti-Islamic PEGIDA movement.
PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against Islamisation of the West) has staged regular anti-immigration marches across Germany.
The migrant influx is stretching resources in many German cities, including Hamburg, where empty commercial properties can now be seized in order to house migrants.
There is growing political pressure on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who continues to defend her open-door refugee policy. Germany can manage, the chancellor insisted at the weekend.
Many German politicians – including her conservative Bavarian CSU allies and various EU partners – have criticized the policy.
The Interior Minister of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania region, Lorenz Caffier, gave an estimate of 1.2-1.5 million asylum claims for this year.
However, federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said it was very hard to give accurate figures. Some refugees either avoided registration or moved elsewhere after being registered in one place, he said.
In 2014, the national total for asylum claims was 202,000.
Two Air France executives were forced to flee with their clothes in tatters after angry workers stormed a meeting at Charles de Gaulle airport in protest at 2,900 planned job cuts.
Human resources manager, Xavier Broseta, and director of Air France at Orly Airport, Pierre Plissonnier, were caught up in the protests.
Xavier Broseta climbed over barriers to escape from angry protestors.
Air France CEO Frederic Gagey had already left the room before the works council meeting near Charles de Gaulle airport, north of Paris, was interrupted about an hour after it had begun.
Parent firm Air France-KLM has said it will seek to take legal action over the protestors’ “aggregated violence”.
Ai France later confirmed the job cuts as part of a big restructuring that also involves route cuts.
The measures include cutting back the long-haul network by 10% and early retirement of aircraft leading to a smaller fleet by 2017.
Turkish army jets have intercepted a Russian warplane while violating Turkey’s airspace on October 3, Turkey’s foreign ministry says.
The Russian fighter plane “exited Turkish airspace into Syria” after being intercepted, the ministry said.
The Turkish minister has spoken to his Russian counterpart, as well as ministers from other NATO countries.
Russia has been carrying out air strikes in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad.
The Russian embassy in Ankara said a Russian plane did violate Turkish airspace, and Russia has “explained it” to Turkey, Interfax reports.
However, a Kremlin spokesman in Moscow did not confirm the incident: “Our ambassador was called to the foreign ministry and given a note, which mentions certain facts, which will be checked.”
The Russian air campaign began on September 30 with Moscow insisting it was targeting ISIS positions.
However, Syrian activists say Russian planes have also targeted other Syrian groups opposed to President Bashar al-Assad.
On October 5, Russia said it had “continued performing pinpoint strikes” on ISIS targets in Syria, carrying out 25 sorties and hitting nine ISIS targets.
Among those targets was a communications centre in Homs, and a command centre in Latakia, it said.
NATO said its Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg would meet the Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioglu at the organization’s headquarters in Brussels on October 5.
Last week Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the Russian intervention in Syria as a grave mistake that would further isolate Moscow.
Saturday’s interception took place south of the Yayladagi/Hatay region, Turkey says.
The foreign ministry in Ankara summoned the Russian ambassador to issue a “strong protest” against the incident, it said.
Swedish author Henning Mankell, best known for a series of mystery novels starring his most famous creation, Inspector Kurt Wallander, has died at the age of 67.
The crime writer revealed he had cancer in a newspaper column in 2014.
Henning Mankell dealt with the experience in his most recent book Quicksand: What It Means To Be A Human Being.
His best-selling mystery novels, which follow policeman Kurt Wallander through Sweden and Mozambique, were turned into a TV drama starring Kenneth Branagh.
The original, Swedish version of the drama starred Krister Henriksson in the title role.
Born in February 1948, Henning Mankell wrote dozens of plays, novels, children’s books and screenplays. But it was for his Wallander series that he was most renowned.
The rumpled and gloomy detective got his name when Henning Mankell ran his finger through a telephone directory, but went on to sell more than 40 million books.
Kurt Wallander first appeared in 1989’s Faceless Killers, investigating a murder in which the only clue is that the perpetrators appear to have been foreigners. When that information was leaked to the public, it triggered a series of racially-motivated attacks in Sweden.
At first, the author was unaware he had created a recurring character, “but then I realized after two or three novels that I had this… instrument who could be useful”.
Henning Mankell divided his time between Sweden and Mozambique, where he ran a theatre company and devoted time to the fight against AIDS.
He was active in the “memory books” project, which encourages parents with HIV to record their stories, not just for their children but for future generations.
Shortly after New Year 2014, Henning Mankell went to see an orthopedic surgeon in Stockholm with what he assumed was a slipped disc. But tests revealed a tumor in his lung, another in his neck, and evidence the cancer had spread throughout his body.
“It was a catastrophe for me. Everything that was normal to me up to that point was gone all of a sudden. No one had died of cancer in my family. I had always assumed I’d die of something else.” He told NPR in 2014
Henning Mankell leaves behind his wife of 17 years, Eva Bergman, the daughter of Ingmar Bergman’s second wife, the dancer Ellen Lundstrom.
American Apparel has filed for bankruptcy protection on October 5.
The Los Angeles-based clothing chain, which has been plagued by plunging sales, high debts and several management crises, said it had agreed a deal to restructure its finances.
The company has been involved in a drawn-out legal battle with its founder Dov Charney over misconduct claims.
American Apparel runs 260 shops and concessions in 19 countries.
The retailer, which has been trying to turn around its business, recorded a loss of $19.4 million in Q2 2015.
Photo American Apparel
American Apparel CEO Paula Schneider said: “This restructuring will enable American Apparel to become a stronger, more vibrant company.”
Under the restructuring agreement, American Apparel’s secured lenders will provide about $90 million in financing, the company said.
It expects to cut its debt to $135 million from $300 million through the restructuring, with the program set to be completed within six months.
The company said it would continue to operate its retail stores, and its wholesale and US manufacturing operations throughout the process.
American Apparel, known for making its products in the US, has not turned a profit since 2009.
In August, the company flagged up problems with its finances, saying it might not have enough capital to keep operations going for the next 12 months as losses widened and cash flows turned negative.
American Apparel was founded in 1989 by Canadian Dov Charney. The company fired Dov Charney in December 2014 over misconduct claims, and in June it was granted a restraining order against him.
ISIS militants have blown up the Arch of Triumph in the ancient city of Palmyra, Syrian officials and local sources say.
The Arch of Triumph was “pulverized” by the ISIS fighters who control the city, a Palmyra activist told AFP.
The monument is thought to have been built about 2,000 years ago.
ISIS has already destroyed two ancient temples at the site, described by UNESCO as one of the most important cultural centers of the ancient world.
“The Arch of Triumph was pulverized. ISIS has destroyed it,” Mohammad Hassan al-Homsi, an activist from Palmyra told AFP on October 5.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group monitoring the conflict, said sources on the ground had confirmed the destruction.
Syrian antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim also confirmed the news, and told Reuters news agency that if ISIS remains in control of Palmyra, “the city is doomed”.
UNESCO’s director general Irina Bokova has said the destruction constitutes a “war crime” and called on the international community to stand united against IS efforts to “deprive the Syrian people of its knowledge, its identity and history”.
ISIS believes shrines or statues represent idolatry, and should be destroyed.
In August, ISIS destroyed the ancient Temple of Baalshamin – one of the city’s best-known buildings built nearly 2,000 years ago.
The group has also published photos of militants destroying what it said were artifacts looted at Palmyra.
ISIS militants captured the historic site from Syrian government troops in May, amid a series of setbacks for forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.
Syria’s conflict, which began in 2011, has left more than 250,000 dead and about half the country’s population displaced.
The World Bank has decided to cut Asia growth forecast for 2015 and 2016, because of the risks posed from a sharp slowdown in China and raising US interest rates.
The bank now expects growth in developing East Asia and the Pacific to be 6.5% in 2015 and 6.4% in 2016, down from an earlier forecast of 6.7%.
The latest estimate is even lower than growth of 6.8% in 2014.
Major development banks have recently revised lower their growth forecasts.
Last month, the Asian Development Bank said slowing growth in China would drag down the developing region’s growth to 5.8% in 2015.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) also flagged in September that slowing growth in the world’s second largest economy posed a threat to the global economy.
“Developing East Asia’s growth is expected to slow because of China’s economic rebalancing and the pace of the expected normalization of US policy interest rates,” said the World Bank’s regional chief economist Sudhir Shetty in a statement on October 5.
“If China’s growth were to slow further, the effects would be felt in the rest of the region, especially in countries linked to China through trade, investment and tourism.”
East Asia accounts for almost two-fifths of the world’s economic growth, according to the World Bank.
The World Bank now expects China’s economy to grow 6.9% this year and 6.7% in 2016, down from an earlier forecast of 7.1% and 7% respectively.
China is headed for its slowest growth in a quarter of a century in 2015 and calls are growing that it may undershoot the government’s official target of 7%.
Interest rates in the US, meanwhile, are expected to rise for the first time in nearly a decade in the coming months, which could result in a flood of capital leaving emerging markets as Asian currencies are hit.
“While this increase has been anticipated and is likely to be orderly, there is still a risk that markets could react sharply to such tightening, causing currencies to depreciate, bond spreads to rise, capital inflows to fall, and liquidity to tighten,” the World Bank said.
