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ARY NEWS

Reuters

  • Trump campaign fires staffer over controversial Facebook posts

    The posts, which date back to 2007, included an apparent racial slur targeting civil rights leader Reverend Al Sharpton’s daughter. Other posts called President Barack Obama “a Socialist Marxist Islamo Fascist Nazi Appeaser,” and “Kenyan” and “Muslim,” according to Business Insider, which first reported the posts on Friday.

    The staffer, Sam Nunberg, has denied writing the posts, according to CNN. Nunberg previously worked for the 2008 presidential campaign of Mitt Romney as chair of a New York City students’ organization, according to a LinkedIn profile under his name. Nunberg was a “low-level” staffer for the Trump campaign, the campaign told Business Insider.

    The source, who asked not to be named, declined to give further details, other than to say Nunberg was no longer working for the campaign.

    Trump is leading most major polls ahead of the first Republican debate on Thursday.

    Earlier this week, Trump’s special counsel Michael Cohen publicly apologized for comments he made on the subject of marital rape.

  • Pittsburgh doctor linked to second Zimbabwe lion hunt probe

    Dr. Jan Seski, who runs a women’s health practice in Pittsburgh, was named by Zimbabwe as a client of Nyala Safaris, owned by a landowner who has been arrested on accusations of conducting an illegal hunt.

    The doctor was in Zimbabwe in April, according to a statement issued by Prince Mupazviriho, permanent secretary in the ministry of environment, water and climate.

    The statement spells the doctor’s name as Jan Sieski but the address provided and other details indicate the doctor is Jan Seski. It did not say if the doctor was being accused of any wrongdoing.

    In July, Minneapolis dentist and trophy hunter Walter Palmer killed a rare black-maned lion known as Cecil that ruled over a pride in Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe. The slaying of the lion triggered global outrage on social media, protests, and petitions calling for Palmer to be extradited to Zimbabwe.

    Referring to Palmer as a “foreign poacher”, Environment Minister Oppah Muchinguri said last week that Palmer should be handed over to Zimbabwean officials to face justice.

    On Sunday, Seski did not reply to telephone messages left at his home and office.

    The Horns of Africa Safaris website pictures a man identified as Seski posing with animals it says he killed with a bow and arrow, including a zebra, cape buffalo and ostrich.

    A website for Alaska Bowhunting Supply pictures a man identified as Seski with an elephant carcass and a caption that reads, “This Zimbabwe elephant is the sixth African elephant shot by Dr. Jan Seski.”

    A Facebook page for Dr. Jan Seski Women’s Health was racking up comments on Sunday afternoon.

    “Kudos on lion kill recently. You are a fine specimen of the human race. I see that you also murdered an elephant …” one comment read.

    The government of Zimbabwe has said that in the aftermath of the killing of Cecil it has directed Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority and other law enforcement agencies to undertake an industry-wide investigation to “crack down and weed out any illegal hunting activities.”

    Stewart Dorrington, operator of Melorani Safaris in South Africa, said Seski had hunted on his property and all his actions there were “perfectly legal.”

    “Jan Seski contributed greatly to our wildlife management and costs of running our reserve as well as to the rural community that is dependent on us for their livelihoods,” Dorrington said in an email.

  • Three members of bin Laden family killed in UK jet crash: police

    The Embraer Phenom 300 jet with four people on board was flying from Milan’s Malpensa airport to Blackbushe airport in southern England when it crashed at a nearby car auction site. All died in the crash.

    It was not immediately clear how the victims were related to the late al Qaeda leader, whose family is one of the most prominent business dynasties in Saudi Arabia.

    “We do believe three of the deceased to be the mother, sister and brother-in-law of the owner of the aircraft, all of whom are from the bin Laden family, but formal post-mortem examinations are ongoing,” Hampshire Police said in a statement.

    Media reports said the victims included bin Laden’s half-sister along with her husband and mother. Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television named those killed as Sana’ Mohamed bin Laden, her husband Zuhair Hashem and Sana’s mother, Raja’ Hashem.

    The plane’s Jordanian pilot was the other person on board, al-Arabiya said. British police said the three passengers were travelling to Britain for a vacation.

    The Saudi Ambassador to Britain on Friday offered condolences to the bin Laden family on the embassy’s Twitter account. He said the embassy was working with British authorities to investigate the incident and organise the speedy transfer of the bodies for burial in the kingdom.

    Britain’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch said it was looking into the cause of the crash.

    Osama bin Laden, the accused mastermind of the 2001 attacks on the United States, was killed by U.S. special forces in a raid on his hideout in Pakistan in 2011.

  • Flavoring, other additives increase cigarettes’ addictiveness: study

    Researchers scoured more than 7 million tobacco industry documents to see how additives known as pyrazines were being used and found these ingredients were introduced after consumers in the 1960s rejected the first “low-tar” cigarettes as being flavorless.

    While nicotine, a stimulant in tobacco, has long been known to be addictive, the study offers fresh evidence that tobacco companies may have added pyrazines to cigarettes to support this addiction, said Dr. Maciej Goniewicz, a researcher at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York.

    “They may facilitate delivery of nicotine to the brain, thus smokers may experience stronger effects of nicotine or these effects may happen faster,” Goniewicz, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.

    Pyrazines may also stimulate pleasant senses of smell, taste or vision, he added. “Smokers associate these pleasant experiences with their cigarettes and this may lead to developing a stronger dependence on cigarettes.”

    Smoking is the leading cause of avoidable deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Smoking dramatically increases the risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, and lung cancer. It can also contribute to cancers almost anywhere in the body, according to the CDC.

    Cigarette manufacturers started heavily marketing “light” and “low tar” cigarettes after a landmark 1964 Surgeon General’s report warned of the health risks of smoking. Companies often described these options as safer than regular or “full-flavor” cigarettes, according to the CDC.

    But there is no risk-free level of exposure to tobacco smoke, or any safe cigarette, the CDC says. In the U.S., terms like “light,” “low,” and “mild” can no longer be used to promote cigarettes.

    For their study, published in Tobacco Control, Dr. Hillel Alpert and colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health explored the history of additives like pyrazines and manufacturers’ knowledge of how these ingredients might act on the brain to make cigarettes more addictive.

    They found documents showing cigarette manufacturers specifically added pyrazines to cigarettes to make them more appealing to consumers.

    The industry documents also showed that companies had some evidence that pyrazines could trigger reactions in the brain that make people more likely to crave cigarettes and smoke more often.

    Alpert didn’t respond to requests for comment on the study.

    Irina Stepanov, a researcher in cancer and environmental health at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, told Reuters Health that smokers may not be able to avoid pyrazines because just about any commercially produced cigarette might contain them.

    These additives can make cigarettes more flavorful and reduce the harshness of the smoke, causing people to inhale more deeply and receive more nicotine, Stepanov, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.

    “That alone can contribute to the addictiveness of cigarettes,” she said.

    Pyrazines may also help flood the brain with dopamine, a chemical involved in regulating sensations of pleasure, she added.

    “The case of pyrazines adds support to previous findings that “low-tar” cigarettes are not safer than regular brands,” Stepanov said. “All cigarettes are addictive and harmful.”

    In an unrelated study in the same journal, researchers found that raising the minimum age for buying cigarettes to 21 could discourage adolescents from smoking

    The study compared smoking trends of more than 16,000 high school students in Needham, Massachusetts, the first town in the U.S. to raise the minimum tobacco sales age to 21 in 2005, and 16 surrounding communities. Between 2006 and 2010, smoking fell from 13 to 7 percent among the Needham students but only from 15 to 12 percent among kids in the surrounding communities.

    “Most experts agree it’s a combination of strategies that will achieve the greatest impact . . . but our study shows increasing sales age to 21 can further decrease youth smoking,” lead author Shari Kessel Schneider of Education Development Center, Inc. in Waltham, Massachusetts told Reuters Health by phone.

  • Toddler killed in West Bank; Jewish arsonists suspected

    The house in Duma, a village near the city of Nablus, had its windows smashed and fire bombs thrown inside shortly before dawn as the family slept, the military and witnesses said. Graffiti in Hebrew reading “revenge” was scrawled outside, below a Star of David.

    The child’s parents and four-year-old brother were flown by helicopter to an Israeli hospital where they were said to be in serious condition, officials said. A second house in the village was also set ablaze, but no one was at home.

    It was the worst attack by Israeli assailants since a Palestinian teenager was burned to death in Jerusalem a year ago. That followed the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers by Palestinian militants in the West Bank.

    The Israeli military boosted forces in the area to search for the suspects, described by a spokesman as “two masked terrorists”, and prevent any escalation in violence. The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas called for revenge.

    Ibrahim Dawabsheh, a Duma resident, said he heard people shouting for help from the house and rushed to it. “I saw two masked men outside,” he told Reuters. He went to get help and when he returned they had gone.

    “We found the parents outside with burns, they said there was another son in the house. We brought him out and then they said there was another boy inside, but we couldn’t reach the bedroom because of the fire. He was left inside until rescue forces came,” Dawabsheh told Reuters.

    Pictures circulated by Palestinian media on the Internet showed a smiling, chubby-faced boy, named as Ali Dawabsheh. Footage from the house showed blackened walls and singed family photos scattered across charred belongings.

    Several hundred people marched at his funeral procession calling for retribution. “With our souls and blood we shall redeem you, martyr,” they chanted as the child’s small flag-draped body was carried through the village for burial.

    “TERRORISM”

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was shocked and promised that “all means” would be used to bring the assailants to justice. “This is a terrorist attack. Israel takes firm action against terrorism, no matter who its perpetrators are,” he said.

    Part of Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition is the ultranationalist Jewish Home party, which advocates more settlements and settler rights in the West Bank. Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett was quick to denounce the attack, but Palestinians accused the party of laying the ground for it.

    Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner called the arson “nothing short of a barbaric act of terrorism”.

    The police said a special task-force was investigating the killing, along with the Shin Bet security service.

    Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he would submit the attack as evidence to the International Criminal Court. “It is a war crime, a humanitarian crime,” he told reporters.

    Earlier a spokesman for Abbas held Israel responsible. “Such a crime would not have occurred if the Israeli government did not insist on pursuing settlements and protecting settlers,” Nabil Abu Rdainah said.

    Hamas spokesman Hussam Badran called for retaliation. “This crime has made occupation soldiers and settlers everywhere legitimate targets,” he said.

    Fearing the killing would provoke violence in Jerusalem, police restricted entrance to al-Aqsa mosque for Friday prayers to men over the age of 50 and to women.

    Some stone-throwing erupted outside the Old City, police said, with one officer lightly injured. In the West Bank city of Hebron, stone-throwing clashes between hundreds of Hamas supporters and Israeli soldiers broke out after prayers.

    “PRICE TAG”

    Israeli Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said the torching appeared to have been a “Price Tag” attack, a reference to militant settlers who exact retribution for any Israeli government curbs on settlement expansion in the West Bank.

    Israel tore down two illegal structures in the Beit El settlement near Ramallah and removed dozens of people from another settlement near Nablus on Wednesday, prompting protests.

    The “Price Tag” group has been blamed for torching a number of mosques in the West Bank in recent years. Those attacks caused widespread damage but no casualties.

    Though Israel has promised to crack down on such assailants only a handful of indictments have been handed down.

    The Palestinians seek a state in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. In the West Bank, they have limited self rule but nearly 60 percent of the territory remains under the full control of the Israeli military.

    Israeli settlements are considered illegal under international law. The last round of U.S.-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians broke down in 2014.

  • Beijing to host Winter Olympics 2022

    The Chinese capital beat Kazakhstan’s Almaty in a secret ballot of 85 IOC members held at a convention centre in downtown Kuala Lumpur in a decision that drew immediate criticism from human rights activists.

    The ballot was conducted twice, first electronically and then by paper after it was discovered the electronic system had malfunctioned.

    The IOC said Beijing won a surprisingly close vote, 44-40, with one abstention.

    “Just as with the Beijing 2008 Summer Games, the Olympic Family has put its faith in Beijing again to deliver the athlete-centred, sustainable and economical Games we have promised,” the Beijing Bid Committee said in a statement.

    “This will be a memorable event at the foot of the Great Wall for the whole Olympic Family, the athletes and the spectators that will further enhance the tremendous potential to grow winter sports in our country, in Asia and around the world.”

    Despite concerns about a lack of natural snow in the city’s distant mountains, and protests from human rights groups, Beijing had been the clear favourite to win the vote after it successfully hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics.

    The high-powered Chinese delegation assured IOC members that Beijing was the safe choice because it had already proved it could stage the Games and said it would take winter sports into the backyard of the world’s most populated country.

  • Vidal completes move to Bayern Munich

    No fee was disclosed but media reports put it at 40 million euros ($44.23 million).

    “I wanted to take another big step forward in my career,” the 28-year-old Vidal told the Bavarian club’s website (www.fcbayern.de) on Tuesday.

    “I want to keep developing as a player and win important trophies like the Champions League. I think the best opportunity to do so is with Bayern.”

    Vidal was a member of the Juventus team beaten 3-1 by Barcelona in last month’s Champions League final at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium.

    He becomes Bayern’s second major signing of the transfer window after Brazilian midfielder Douglas Costa joined from Shakhtar Donetsk at the start of July.

    Bayern have also sold Germany playmaker Bastian Schweinsteiger to Manchester United.

    Vidal is no stranger to the Bundesliga having played for Bayer Leverkusen for four seasons until 2011.

    He also helped Chile win the Copa America title for the first time on home soil this month.

    “I’m thrilled about playing in the Bundesliga again and obviously hope to win it this time,” Vidal said.

    “I didn’t manage it with Leverkusen back then but with Bayern there’s a very, very good chance.”

  • Mealworms, algae make a tasty dish at London fest

    In a project subsidised by the global health foundation, the Wellcome Trust, Knight, a micro-biologist by training, and Jack were cooking 40 covers twice a day from a make-shift kitchen at the base of a tree at the Shuffle Film Festival in an East London park.

    The Symbiosis Restaurant is a key feature of the Shuffle film festival curated by “Shallow Graves” film director Danny Boyle who was behind the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympic Games.

    The ethereal restaurant, around 30 m (yards) above ground in the canopy of the lush, overgrown Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, was designed by Jess Sutton and features lightbulbs using bio-luminescence extracted from squid, an ingredient that features in one of the starters.

    “It’s an inspirational space and I love the way they use organic ingredients and the concept behind it,” said Ilaria Leone, a content manager at an interior design company. “It kept you thinking as you walked off through the cemetery.”

    Each dish has a title that explains a relationship between the ingredients. To represent parasitism, a tacos dish uses a fungus that causes corn smut, the chicken tacos dish that eventually kills the corn on which it lives, and Knight says that this represents what humans are in danger of doing to the planet they depend on to live.

    “The use of cows for meat, for example, is bad for the planet and bad for humans, as well as the animals,” she told Reuters during a busy service.

    “Land needs to be cleared for the cows to graze on, and the meat is not good for human health.”

    She hopes that serving the food in the tree house will remind diners of how, in other parts of the world, trees are being cleared to make way for cattle to graze.

    The food is elegantly presented, and features edible flowers such as violets grown in Knight’s own garden and herbs growing in the cemetery park, which is surrounded by tower blocks in the gritty district of Mile End.

    But it is meal worms grown in east London, and served in dumplings fermented with Chinese vinegar, that represent the direction people should be looking to source their protein in future.

    Using insects for sustenance will enable humans to wean themselves from the destructive mass production of protein involved in producing meat and some vegetable crops, Knight said.

  • Facebook to scale up free mobile Internet service to boost usage

    In a blog post released to mark the first year of the initiative, Facebook said it will open a portal allowing any mobile operator to offer the service under its Internet.org platform. Facebook currently partners with specific operators to launch the service in different countries.

    Internet.org has brought over 9 million people online over the past year, Chris Daniels, vice president of product for Internet.org, told Reuters on Monday. Facebook developed the platform with six technology partners to bring an estimated 4.5 billion unconnected people online, mainly in Latin America, Asia and Africa.

    It offers pared-down web services for free to users, along with access to Facebook’s own social network and messaging services.

    Facebook’s blog post said that over the past year, the service had bought new users onto mobile networks on average over 50 percent faster and that more than half the people using Internet.org are paying for data to access the wider Internet within 30 days.

    “This is really a customer acquisition tool for mobile operators where the benefit to them of offering a very light amount of free data is to bring on more paying subscribers to their networks,” Daniels said, speaking over phone from Nairobi, where he is attending a summit.

    Facebook was not paying for any of the data being used to access the service, he said.

    The Internet.org application, launched in India in February in partnership with Reliance Communications, faced backlash with a number of leading technology and Internet firms pulling out of the service after activists claimed it violated the principles of a neutral Internet.

    “I would say India is unique in that respect and very much an outlier. In other markets, Internet.org has been embraced as a pro-connectivity initiative that has garnered a lot of support,” Daniels said.

    A committee of the telecoms ministry set up to examine the issue of net neutrality earlier this month recommended that collaborations between mobile operators and content providers that enable “gatekeeping” roles should be discouraged.

  • Saudi Arabia accuses Iran of making threats to neighbours

    Speaking at a joint news conference with visiting European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, Jubeir said Saudi Arabia had raised the issue with her.

    He said the comments showed that Tehran was intervening in its neighbors’ internal affairs.

    “It does not represent the desire of a state for good neighborly relations but that of a state which has aspirations in the region and which carried out hostile act like this,” he added.

    Jubeir did not clarify who made the comments or when, but he said they could be linked to the terms of the agreement with world powers on its nuclear programme or to setbacks suffered by Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen and President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Syria.

    “I don’t know, but we reject their comments and reject the hostility they show towards the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the countries of the region,” he said.

    Bahrain on Saturday said it had foiled an arms smuggling plot by two Bahrainis with ties to Iran and recalled its ambassador to Tehran for consultations after what it said were repeated hostile Iranian statements.

    Relations between regional Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia and Shia Muslim rival Iran have long been sour, with Riyadh accusing Tehran of trying to expand its influence to its Arab neighbors and allies.

    Western-allied Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, is currently leading an Arab coalition in a campaign against the Houthis in Yemen.

    Gulf Arab states are concerned that the nuclear accord will hasten a rapprochement between Tehran and Washington that could embolden Iran to increase support for paramilitary groups across the Middle East.

    Mogherini was due to travel to Tehran on Tuesday, where she will meet Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif and other senior officials.