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ARY NEWS

Reuters

  • Turkish jets hit Kurdish militant camps in Iraq, at least 55 killed: sources

    The jets took off from a base in Diyarbakir, in Turkey’s southeast, and later returned without damage, the sources said.

    Turkey’s largely Kurdish southeast has been hit by almost daily waves of deadly fighting between PKK militants and security forces since the collapse of a ceasefire in July.

    Security forces have responded by launching frequent bombing raids into mountainous northern Iraq where the PKK has camps. It is the worst violence NATO member Turkey has seen in two decades, coinciding with fighting across the border in Syria involving government troops and Islamic State militants.

    The PKK began its separatist insurgency in 1984, triggering a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people. The group, which says it is now fighting for greater Kurdish autonomy, is designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union and the United States.

    President Tayyip Erdogan has promised the fight will go on until “not one terrorist is left”. The conflict has flared up as Turkey prepares for a parliamentary election on Nov. 1 following an inconclusive June vote.

  • U.S. says Assad must go, timing down to negotiation

    Speaking after talks with British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond in London, Kerry called on Russia and Iran to use their influence over Assad to convince him to negotiate a political transition.

    Kerry said the United States welcomed Russia’s involvement in tackling the Islamic State in Syria but a worsening refugee crisis underscored the need to find a compromise that could also lead to political change in the country.

    “We need to get to the negotiation. That is what we’re looking for and we hope Russia and Iran, and any other countries with influence, will help to bring about that, because that’s what is preventing this crisis from ending,” said Kerry.

    “We’re prepared to negotiate. Is Assad prepared to negotiate, really negotiate? Is Russia prepared to bring him to the table?”

    Russia’s buildup at Syria’s Latakia airbase has raised the possibility of air combat missions in Syrian airspace. Heavy Russian equipment, including tanks, helicopters and naval infantry forces, have been moved to Latakia, U.S. officials say.

    Kerry said of Assad’s removal: “For the last year and a half we have said Assad has to go, but how long and what the modality is …that’s a decision that has to be made in the context of the Geneva process and negotiation.”

    Kerry added: “It doesn’t have to be on day one or month one … there is a process by which all the parties have to come together and reach an understanding of how this can best be achieved.”

    Kerry said he did not have a specific time frame in mind for Assad to stay. “I just know that the people of Syria have already spoken with their feet. They’re leaving Syria.”

    Hammond, who on Sept. 9 said Britain could accept Assad staying in place for a transition period, said Assad could not be part of Syria’s long-term future “but the modality and timing has to be part of a political solution that allows us to move forward.”

    Hammond said the situation in Syria was now more complicated with Russia’s increased military involvement in the country.

    “Because of the Russian engagement the situation in Syria is becoming more complicated and we need to discuss this as part of a much bigger problem – the migration pressures, the humanitarian crisis in Syria as well as the need to defeat ISIL,” he said.

    Kerry and Hammond said they also discussed conflicts in Yemen, Libya and Ukraine.

  • Putin gives go-ahead to Belarus airbase plan

    Saturday’s announcement, which comes at a time of tension with the West over Russian involvement in Ukraine and Syria, may also signal the Kremlin’s interest in keeping unpredictable Belarus within its geopolitical orbit.

    Putin said in a statement he had agreed a government proposal to sign a deal for the military airbase and ordered defense and foreign ministry officials to start talks with Belarus. The plan is not expected to face major obstacles.

    The idea of setting up an airbase in the ex-Soviet republic was revealed by Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu in 2013, and follows a 2009 agreement under which Russia and Belarus agreed to defend their common external frontier and airspace.

    Russian defense officials have said the base would be used to station Su-27 fighters. Russia already has some fighter aircraft in Belarus but this would be the first full-scale base there since Soviet times.

    Russia has scaled back its military presence abroad, closing bases in distant Cold War allies such as Cuba and Vietnam.

    However, a naval base at Tartus in Syria has recently become the focus of world attention as Russia has boosted its troop presence there in a move seen as bolstering its diplomatic influence in the region.

    Russia already has military bases in ex-Soviet neighbors Kyrgyzstan and Armenia, which like Belarus are also members of a Eurasian Economic Union that Putin sees as the embryo of a new geopolitical bloc.

    Last year Russia annexed the Ukrainian province of Crimea, partly due to fears it would be pushed out of its large naval base in the Crimean port of Sevastopol.

    The creation of a base in Belarus may also be a signal to the West that Russia will not tolerate intrusion in its traditional sphere of influence.

    Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus since 1994, is seen as a long-standing Russian ally and is often criticized in the West for his record on human rights.

    He has a reputation for being unpredictable because of his common practice of playing off Russia against the West.

    Spooked by Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Poland and the Baltic states have repeatedly asked NATO to station forces permanently in their territories along the alliance’s eastern flank in Russia’s vicinity.

  • Egypt's Sisi swears in new government, keeps ministers in key posts

    Sisi named former head of the state oil company Tarek al-Mullah as petroleum minister, charged with easing the country’s energy crisis and attracting more foreign investment in a strategic sector.

    Mullah succeeds Sherif Ismail, seen as one of the best-performing ministers, who became prime minister.

    The new government faces many challenges.

    Islamic State, which seized large parts of Iraq and Syria, has gained the backing of the most active militant group in Egypt, the recently renamed Sinai Province.

    Militants have stepped up attacks on Egyptian soldiers and police since the army toppled Islamist President Mohamed Mursi in 2013 after mass protests against his rule. Hundreds have been killed in bombing and shooting attacks.

    Egypt is struggling to get large volumes of foreign investment after years of political turmoil triggered by the 2011 uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak, even though Sisi’s economic reforms have won praise.

    The new cabinet includes 16 new ministers out of 33 in total but few important posts were handed to newcomers. The defense, foreign and justice ministers all kept their jobs as did most economy-related ministers such as planning and supplies.

    “They could not find candidates and the main reason is that no one wants to be minister for three months; it is not enough time,” said Said Sadek, professor of political sociology.

    Egypt holds a long-awaited parliamentary election in October and the new chamber will have a say over the government and can even reject Sisi’s choice for prime minister, according to the country’s constitution.

    The election concludes in November and a new government is likely to be named after the results are announced.

    As army chief, Sisi orchestrated the overthrow of Mursi, Egypt’s first freely-elected president.

    Sisi promised to deliver democracy and went on to become elected president. Critics say he has stifled dissent under the toughest security crackdown in the country’s history, allegations the government denies.

    Security forces killed hundreds of Islamists and jailed thousands of others. Prominent secular activists have also been jailed.

    “This will be a caretaker government, not a political one. There are no politicians and one of the problems with Egyptian politics is we don’t see politicians as ministers. Even the prime minister is not a politician,” said Sadek.

    He added that the reason several ministries had been merged was due to the lack of candidates willing to accept posts.

    “I see nothing that indicates this is a new government,” said Wahid Abdel Meguid, political analyst at the Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies. “Even the new ministers used to be ministers before.”

    Sisi kept central bank governor Hisham Ramez in place and appointed Nabil Sadek as prosecutor general more than two months after the previous office holder was assassinated by a car bomb on his way to work.

  • Fed's Lacker says economy strong enough for higher rates

    Fed policymakers on Thursday voted to keep the Fed’s target interest rate at between zero and a quarter point.

    “Such exceptionally low real interest rates are unlikely to be appropriate for an economy with persistently strong consumption growth and tightening labor markets,” Lacker said in a statement.

    He was the lone dissenter among the 10 Fed officials who voted at the meeting. Lacker said the Fed’s target should rise by a quarter point.

    Lacker has a history of dissent in Fed policy meetings. In 2012, he voted against eight straight policy decisions by the central bank. At the time he was urging the Fed to wind down asset purchases that were aimed at stimulating the economy.

    Regarding Thursday’s decision at the Fed, Lacker said a rebound in consumer spending and “tightening labor markets” meant the economy no longer needed zero interest rates.

    He said keeping interest rates at their current level deviated from the way the Fed has responded to the economy in the past, which was dangerous because public understanding of the Fed’s behavior was “an essential foundation for the monetary stability we currently enjoy.”

    “Such departures are risky and raise the likelihood of adverse outcomes,” Lacker said.

  • Dubai ruler's 34-year-old son dies in a heart attack

    Sheikh Rashid, eldest son of the Prime Minister and Vice President of the United Arab Emirates Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, suffered a heart attack on Saturday morning, the agency said.

    WAM said prayers will be held at Zabeel mosque this evening, followed by funeral at the Umm Harir cemetery in Bur Dubai.

    Sheikh Rashed bin Mohammad Al-Maktoum at the 15th Asian Games in Doha

    Details from Dubai Media Office

    The emirate’s official media office made several tweets on the sad occasion, including one which said that a 3 day period of mourning had been announced by the Ruler of Dubai’s Court.

     

     

    Prime Minister sends condolences

    Web Desk adds: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has condoled the demise of Sheikh Rashid bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum as has the Chief Minister of Punjab Shahbaz Sharif

  • Decade of Emmys show little change in women behind the scenes on TV

    But a study released this week examining women in key behind-the-scenes TV roles, found little has changed in the past decade.

    Nominations for the 67th Emmy Awards, which air Sunday, reflect a large gender disparity as women make up only 25 percent of this year’s nominated writers, directors, editors and producers.

    That percentage has shown little improvement over 10 years, according to a report conducted by nonprofit the Women’s Media Center, which examined Emmy nominations for writing, directing, editing and producing from 2006 through 2015.

    Women accounted for 28 percent of nominees in producing categories, 18 percent in editing, 13 percent in writing and just 8 percent in directing categories.

    “The men and women in these roles have the power to decide and mold what the story is, who is in the story, and how the story is told,” said Julie Burton, president of the Women’s Media Center in a statement.

    Having women behind the scenes “is crucial to making sure women’s experiences, perspectives, voices, and images are part of any story,” Burton added.

    Washington, D.C.-based Women’s Media Center was founded by actress Jane Fonda, poet Robin Morgan and journalist Gloria Steinem in 2005, aiming to promote women in media.

    And change may be on the horizon. Schumer this year landed four Emmy nods including best directing in a variety series for “Inside Amy Schumer,” only the second time in 10 years that a woman has been nominated in that race.

    Female writers of AMC’s period drama “Mad Men” accounted for 10 out 15 nominations for the show in best drama series writing since 2006.

    Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” a frequent nominee in the outstanding writing for a variety series category, has four women on its writing staff this year, up from just one in 2006.

    The female nominees in that category have thus increased from 6 percent in 2006 to 23 percent in 2015.

    “If more women were hired as writers, directors, editors, producers, and especially as creators and executive producers, the talent pool for nominations would be more reflective of the overall population and audience,” Burton said.

  • Infant sleep safety still misunderstood by many caregivers

    Researchers questioned caregivers of newborns at Staten Island University Hospital in New York City about sleep safety and found 53 percent of them disagreed with use of pacifiers – which are in fact linked to a lower risk of SIDS – and 62 percent believed in swaddling infants – which is tied to an increased SIDS risk.

    It’s possible that new parents may have a hard time discarding advice from their own parents or grandparents even though recommendations about sleep safety have changed considerably from one generation to the next, lead study author Dr. Sarah Varghese said by email.

    “There is a certain power surrounding ‘traditional’ knowledge,” said Varghese, now at Emory University and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. “Both parents and health care professionals need to stay up-to-date on recommendations.”

    Nationwide, SIDS kills about four babies out of every 10,000 live births, down from about 130 in 10,000 in 1990, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Despite the dramatic decline in death from SIDS since 1992, when the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) announced that babies should be placed on their backs to sleep, SIDS in recent years has remained the third leading cause of infant mortality, the authors report in the Journal of Perinatology.

    Almost four years ago, the AAP issued new infant sleep guidelines for prevention of SIDS and other sleep-related deaths; the guidelines encouraged breastfeeding, pacifier use, and firm crib mattresses, and cautioned against blankets and pillows and bed-sharing.

    The study by Varghese and colleagues, while small, suggests that at least some parents may not have absorbed these most recent recommendations.

    The researchers questioned 121 caregivers, including parents and grandparents, of newborns delivered in 2013, asking how strongly they agreed or disagreed with recommended infant sleep safety practice.

    Most participants strongly agreed on the importance of using a safety approved crib, avoiding exposure to smoke and getting routine childhood vaccinations.

    But most of them disagreed with guidance against swaddling and using home monitors, as well as recommended pacifier use.

    Some caregivers may avoid pacifiers because they have concerns about dental issues, while others may worry that it could interfere with breastfeeding, the study authors note. The AAP recommends starting pacifier use when babies are about three or four weeks old, after they are successfully breastfeeding.

    Swaddling with blankets or specially designed wraps can increase the risk of infant death, but some nurses still swaddle infants in the hospital and teach new parents how to do it themselves, the authors note. Some caregivers believe swaddling can soothe infants and make it easier for them to sleep.

    Only 61 percent of participants recalled being taught about sleep safety by a health care provider.

    The study was small, limited to English-speaking participants and included primarily white caregivers, which may limit how much the findings apply to a more diverse population, the researchers acknowledge.

    Even so, the findings highlight the challenge of conveying safe sleep practices to parents who may be overwhelmed by too much advice, said Dr. Michael Goodstein, a neonatologist at York Hospital WellSpan Health in York, Pennsylvania and a member of the AAP task force on SIDS.

    “Even if parents have been made aware of safe sleep information, there may be competing and conflicting information and advice available from multiple sources including books, magazines, family and friends, TV shows and the Internet, as well as many different health care providers,” Goodstein, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.

  • "Heads as well as hearts": Croatia says it can take no more migrants

    The migrants, mostly from poor or war-torn countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, have streamed into Croatia since Wednesday, after Hungary blocked what had been the main route with a metal fence and riot police at its border with Serbia.

    “We cannot register and accommodate these people any longer,” Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic told a news conference in the capital Zagreb.

    “They will get food, water and medical help, and then they can move on. The European Union must know that Croatia will not become a migrant ‘hotspot’. We have hearts, but we also have heads.”

    The arrival of 13,000 in the space of 48 hours, many crossing fields and some dodging police, has proved too much for one of the EU’s less prosperous states in a crisis that has divided the 28-nation bloc and left it scrambling to respond.

    A record 473,887 refugees and migrants have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe so far this year, the International Organization for Migration said, most of them from countries at war such as Syria who are seeking a better, safer life.

    Hundreds of thousands have been trekking across the Balkan peninsula to reach the richer European countries north and west, especially Germany, which is preparing to accept 800,000 asylum seekers this year.

    But that has wrongfooted the European Union, which has come up with no common policy to deal with the biggest wave of migration to Western Europe since World War Two.

    Hungary acted on its own to shut the main route this week by closing its border with Serbia, leaving thousands of migrants scattered across the Balkans searching for alternative paths.

    Croatia, offering one of the few overland routes to Germany that would bypass Hungary, found itself suddenly overwhelmed.

    Despite Hungary’s hardline stance, it did take in some migrants on Friday that Croatia expelled. Ferried to the border in buses, they were watched by police and soldiers as they were transferred onto other buses across the border in Hungary, where police said they would be registered.

    “TIME TO DEAL DIFFERENTLY”

    While Zagreb made welcoming statements earlier this week, Milanovic said he had called a session of Croatia’s National Security Council and that it was time to deal with the problem differently. The president has told the military to be ready if called on to help stop the flow of people.

    Croatia, the EU’s newest member state, has already closed almost all roads from the border. Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic said if the crisis continued “it is a matter of time” before the border was shut completely, though Milanovic, in his remarks, questioned whether even that would keep migrants out.

    Police have rounded up many migrants at the Tovarnik railway station on the Croatian side of the border with Serbia, where several thousand spent the night under open skies.

    “We are so exhausted,” said Hikmat, a bare-footed 32-year-old Syrian woman from Damascus, after a journey, like many others, by sea and then through the Balkans to the border between the two former Yugoslav republics.

    She said she had been travelling for two months with her son, and added: “Look at me. I just want to get anywhere where we will be safe.”

    Some kept travelling and reached tiny EU member Slovenia overnight. Many did so by evading the police and trekking through fields or travelling by train, exasperated by Europe’s confused response to the crisis.

    “I didn’t expect such a reaction from Europe… They first open the doors then they close them. They punish the people,” Syrian migrant Dara Jaffar said at the Tovarnik railway station.

    SLOVENIA SAYS NO CORRIDOR

    Worried by the situation, Slovenia stopped all rail traffic on the main line from Croatia and said there was “no basis on which we could form a corridor” for migrants to pass through en route to western Europe.

    Unlike Croatia, Slovenia is a member of Europe’s Schengen zone of border-free travel, an important goal for refugees to reach. With around 1,000 migrants expected to enter the country in the next 24 hours, Slovenia plans to abide by EU rules by receiving asylum requests but returning illegal migrants.

    After failing to agree on a plan to distribute 160,000 refugees across the EU — just a fraction of the numbers arriving this year — the bloc has called a summit for next Wednesday to work on a united response.

    Tempers are fraying among some migrants. In the Croatian town of Beli Manastir, just over the border from Hungary, angry groups of Afghan and Syrian migrants, waiting for trains to Zagreb, fought with rocks and sticks at a ticket office.

    Rocks, smashed bottles and broken sticks littered the ground. A handful of police in ordinary uniforms tried to restore control.

    Relations between EU states have also been damaged, with several suspending the Schengen rules to restore emergency border controls to slow the flow.

    Despite criticism by rights groups and some EU officials, Hungary’s right-wing prime minister, Viktor Orban, said his country was extending the fence along its southern border with Serbia to the Croatian section.

    Serbia warned its neighbours against shutting down the main arteries between them, saying it “will seek to protect our economic and every other interest before international courts.”

    Germany, which is planning to host by far the largest number of refugees, says other EU countries must do their part.

    Some other EU states, especially former Communist countries in the east, reject quotas to accept refugees. They accuse Berlin of exacerbating the problem and encouraging the overland surge by suspending EU rules to announce in August it would take in Syrian refugees wherever they enter the EU.

    German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel renewed a threat that countries that do not help in the migrant crisis will be deprived of EU funds.

    Interior ministers will try to overcome the differences a day before the EU’s leaders meet.

    “These occasions may be the last opportunity for a positive, united and coherent European response to this crisis. Time is running out,” Adrian Edwards, spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency, said in Geneva.

  • Many Apple devices crashing on iOS 9 update

    Twitter and other social media were awash with disgruntled customers reporting two distinct faults, with one appearing to be linked specifically to older models of Apple iPhones and iPads.

    “It is beyond inconvenient to not be able to use your phone for a day,” said student Pip Cordi as staff in the Apple store in central Sydney looked at her phone on Friday. “I have a lot of apps that I use for school – things like language apps and dictionaries and that’s all really important for my studies.”

    Another iPhone user, Zorry Coates, said she had spent three hours in the Apple store and had been left with the option of either returning her phone to factory settings – losing any non-backed-up data – or waiting until Apple technicians announced an update.

    “They said they were aware of the problem and their engineers were working on it 24/7, but they couldn’t tell me when – or how – I would get a solution,” Zorry said.

    “I’m very annoyed because it’s wasted half my day. They pride themselves on being a company that’s flawless.”

    Apple’s headquarters in San Francisco did not respond to a request for comment late Thursday. An Apple spokesman in Sydney said the company had no comment.

    Despite any troubles, significant numbers of iOS users had upgraded; more than 16 percent, according to Mixpanel, a San Francisco, California-based analytics company, as of 4 p.m. PDT (2300 GMT) Thursday.

    ERROR MESSAGE

    Charlie Brown, a technology expert at Sydney-based Cybershack, said any number of dissatisfied customers was significant in the social media era, particularly following the troubled rollout of iOS 8. Apple released several further updates to iOS8, but some of the bugs were never fully fixed.

    “The risk to Apple in terms of having dissatisfied customers is that as their customer base grows, so will the number of those dissatisfied customers,” said Brown.

    One group of users reported that iOS 9 upgrade would fail after several minutes, requiring them to start the process over. Many posted screen shots of the error message they received: “Software Update Failed”.

    That problem was likely caused by servers that were overloaded when too many people tried to download the upgrade simultaneously, tech analysts said.

    “It’s like the Black Friday thing,” said Bob O’Donnell of Technalysis Research, referring to the major U.S. shopping sale day after Thanksgiving. “Some websites get creamed on the traffic on Black Friday.”

    Other users, many of them with older devices, reported their devices seizing up on a “swipe to upgrade” page. The latest upgrade had been deemed by Apple as “friendly” to the older devices after the iOS 8 problems.

    “Apple were saying the downloading mechanism doesn’t take as much space to download,” said Sydney-based Graham McKay, an IT support specialist.

    McKay and Brown said they always advised clients to wait several days before downloading any new upgrades from Apple, Google Inc or Microsoft Corp to make sure any glitches had been found and ironed out.

    Metering the upgrade, or allowing users to upgrade in waves rather than all at once, would have been a smarter approach, O’Donnell said.

    “It’s a lot about setting expectations,” he said.

    Apple did this week delay the release of watch OS 2, its updated operating system for the Apple Watch after it discovered a bug in development.