Category: World

PARIS: Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy goes on trial Wednesday over claims of illicit financing for his failed 2012 re-election bid, just weeks after a landmark conviction for corruption. On March 1, the 66-year-old became France´s first post-war president to be sentenced to prison when he was given a three-year term, two years of which were suspended, for corruption and influence peddling. That case was one of several hanging over him since he left office. Sarkozy has denied any wrongdoing, saying he is the victim of a vindictive judicial system with which he tangled while in power between 2007 and 2012. In the trial opening Wednesday, which he is not expected to attend, the divisive rightwinger is accused of overspending on his failed 2012 re-election bid to the tune of 20 million euros ($24 million). The money was spent on lavish US-style rallies in the final days of the race, as Sarkozy scrambled to fend off an unexpectedly strong challenge from his Socialist rival Francois Hollande. Prosecutors say accountants had warned him that the campaign was set to blow the 22.5 million euro ($26.7 million) cap on spending between the first and second rounds of voting, but Sarkozy insisted on holding more events. Investigators say his total spending on the second round came to nearly 43 million euros.

The former interim president of Bolivia, Jeanine Áñez, and several ex-ministers have been arrested.

Prosecutors say she and the ministers took part in a coup against the then President Evo Morales in 2019.

Mr Morales resigned and fled Bolivia after protests and allegations of electoral fraud.

Ms Áñez has said she is the victim of a political vendetta by Mr Morales’s Mas Socialist party, which has since returned to power.

The party won a landslide victory in presidential and congressional elections in October last year, paving the way for Mr Morales to return to Bolivia from Argentina and take over the leadership of the Mas party.

His colleague Luis Arce was elected president, though Mr Arce stressed in a BBC interview last year that he would pursue his own political path, saying he was not Evo Morales.

As the most senior senator, Ms Áñez became caretaker president after Mr Morales fled. But members of the Mas party accused her, in cahoots with police and military figures, of engineering his overthrow.

She was detained in the early hours of Saturday in the city of Trinidad, government minister, Eduardo Del Castillo Del Carpio, announced on Facebook. She was then taken by plane to the city of La Paz.

Web Desk – Washington – Donald Trump became the 45th president of United States on Friday.
“We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones and unite the civilised world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the earth,” he declared.
Trump, 70, was administered the oath by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. His wife Melania Trump stood at his side. The oath was given using two Bibles — one from President Lincoln’s inauguration, and another that Trump’s mother gave him in 1955.
The Republican billionaire placed his left hand on a bible used by Abraham Lincoln and recited the 35-word oath spoken since George Washington, and then launched into a much-anticipated inaugural address.
Afterward, he stretched his arms wide and hugged his wife, Melania, and other members of his family. Then he turned around to a podium and delivered his inaugural address.
Trump then gave an inaugural address that — while short in duration — made a major break with presidential precedent. Most presidents use this moment to acknowledge the opponent they defeated, to praise America’s promise and to call upon both parties to work together.
Trump, by contrast, made no mention of his Democratic opponent, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. He used his speech to make a wide-ranging condemnation of America’s current state — talking about “American carnage” caused by urban crime, and saying that “wealth, strength and confidence had dissipated” because of jobs lost overseas.
Trump also used his address to say that both major political parties had lost their way, serving the needs of an elite rather than the needs of the public. In grandiose language, Trump sought to cast this day as a kind of restart for American politics, with everything before — Republican and Democrat — cast aside.
With now former president Barack Obama and three previous presidents watching from behind him, Trump seemed to condemn them as unfaithful to the popular will, saying that his inauguration signaled that “the people” would rule the country again.
“Today, we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another, or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C., and giving it back to you, the people,” he said. He continued: “For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Politicians prospered, but the jobs left and the factories closed.”
“We, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and restore its promise for all of our people,” Trump told a crowd of hundreds of thousands massed on the National Mall. “Together we will determine the course of America, and the world, for many, many years to come,” he said.
“This moment is your moment, it belongs to you,” Trump told a large crowd that had earlier booed Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader in the US Senate.
Revisiting themes from his improbable campaign victory, Trump said his presidency would aim to help struggling middle-class families, build up the US military and strengthen US borders.
“From this day forward a new vision will govern our land,” Trump said. “From this day forward it’s going to be only America First.”
“Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American factories,” Trump said. Trump’s inauguration caps the improbable rise to power of the Manhattan real estate mogul, who had never before held elected office, served in the government or the armed forces.
A crowd of hundreds of thousands looked on, including outgoing president Barack Obama and Trump’s defeated election opponent Hillary Clinton— who narrowly missed out on becoming America’s first female president.
Trump has vowed to tear up Obama’s policies and re-examine decades-old alliances with Europe and in Asia. Beginning Friday, his team plans a rolling series of daily executive orders to roll back Obama’s agenda.
“Mr President-elect, how are you?” Obama asked his successor, after having deposited a letter in the Resolute desk and left the Oval Office for the last time. Trump takes over a country divided after a savage election campaign. A wealthy New York businessman and former reality TV star, he will set the country on a new, uncertain path at home and abroad.
Trump and his vice president, Mike Pence, began the day attending a prayer service at St. John’s Episcopal Church near the White House. Trump, wearing a dark suit and red tie, and Melania Trump, clad in a classic-styled, powder blue ensemble, then headed into the White House for a meeting with Obama and his wife, Michelle. Trump campaigned on a pledge to take the country on a more isolationist, protectionist path and has vowed to impose a 35 percent tariff on goods on imports from US companies that went abroad.
His desire for warmer ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin and threats to cut funding for North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations has allies from Britain to the Baltics worried that the traditional US security umbrella will be diminished.—Agencies

DUBAI:Chairman Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Bilawal Bhutto Zardari met renowned US fashion model and socialite Paris Hilton in Dubai and uploaded their selfie at his instagram.

Sharing a picture of himself with the US celebrity, the young PPP chairman remarked on his Instagram account, “Had the pleasure of meeting the lovely Paris Hilton.”

Agencies – The Republican nominee won Wednesday after capturing Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes, putting him over the 270 threshold.

Voters eager to shake up the nation’s political establishment picked the celebrity businessman to become the nation’s 45th president.

Trump rode an astonishing wave of support from voters seeking change and willing to accept a candidate loose with facts and accused of sexual misconduct.

He upset Democrat Hillary Clinton, who would have become the first woman to serve in the Oval Office.

Trump struck a populist tone and placed a hardline immigration stance at his campaign’s heart.

Trump rose to political fame after questioning whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States. He will now follow Obama into the White House.

A deeply divided electorate of about 200 million Americans were asked to make a momentous choice between electing the nation’s first woman president, or handing the reins of power to a billionaire populist who has upended US politics with his improbable outsider campaign.

Republicans retained control of the United States Senate, with 29 out of 34 results called by major TV networks, including one pickup by the Democrats in Illinois.

A handful of extremely tight Senate races were too close to call, while the networks declared that Republicans, as expected, retained their majority in the House of Representatives.

The outcomes in both chambers will help determine how hard it will be for either Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump to get things done as president.

The following are facts on the stakes and races to watch:

• US Senate, 100 seats. Senators serve six-year terms.
• A third of the Senate is up for re-election every two years.
• Procedural rules in the Senate mean 60 votes are needed to advance major initiatives.
• Republicans entered the election with 54 seats, led by Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, versus the Democrats’ 44 seats and two independent seats.

Cheers erupted when one network update showed Trump slightly ahead in Florida.

“This is like a football game. I’m going to have a heart attack,” said 76-year-old Mike Garcia, a Republican from Pennsylvania.

Across town at the huge conference center where Clinton hopes to hold her victory rally, supporters were just as giddy.

“Hillary’s going to win and we’re going to unite America,” declared Jade Wiederholt, a 43-year-old marketing consultant from New York.

Clinton tweeted: “This team has so much to be proud of. Whatever happens tonight, thank you for everything.”

She and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, huddled in a hotel near the venue to prepare a victory ─ or concession ─ speech.

Earlier, the Clintons voted near their home in Chappaqua, before emerging to shake hands and chat with the crowd.

“So many people are counting on the outcome of this election, what it means for our country,” the 69-year-old former secretary of state said. “And I’ll do the very best I can if I’m fortunate enough to win today.”

An exit poll by CNN however found that only four in 10 voters were optimistic that Obama’s successor would do any better than he has during his two terms in office.

Trump, 70, cast his ballot alongside his wife Melania in a Manhattan school gymnasium.

“Right now it’s looking very good,” he told reporters ─ paying no heed to protesters who welcomed him with chants of “New York hates you!”

The 2016 race was the most bruising in modern memory.

Obama’s election eight years ago as the nation’s first black president had raised hopes of uniting Americans, but the current contest has only highlighted the country’s divisions ─ and the fact that voters are not necessarily happy with their options.

Exit polls by ABC News and NBC News found that both Clinton and Trump are seen as untrustworthy by majorities of voters, while most find Trump’s temperament unpresidential.

Most voters told ABC that the economy was the most important issue or them, but were evenly divided on which candidate would handle it better, so the final result may come down to turnout.

The exit polls, and reports coming in from polling stations around the country, suggested that Latino turnout was high and that this would favor Clinton over the anti-immigration candidate, Trump.

Trump’s campaign spooked world markets seeking stability after the recent global slowdown, but stocks rose for a second straight day Tuesday on the expectation that Clinton will prevail.

At the closing bell, the S&P 500 closed up 0.4 per cent. But Asian markets were open as polls closed and the situation was much less clear cut, with equities falling after initial gains.

Early voting has shown particular enthusiasm among Hispanic voters, an increasingly influential voting bloc whose strong turnout could shape the results.

Clinton has urged citizens to vote for a more “big-hearted” America, while Trump has vowed to tear up US trade deals, control immigration, restore manufacturing jobs that moved abroad and to: “Make America great again.”

One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. Burhan Wani’s father said just that.

In an interview Muzaffar Wani, a government school teacher, gave to Times of India, he said, “When Bhagat Singh was fighting against the British, they called him a terrorist, but Indians maintained he was a freedom fighter. When the problem of Kashmir will be solved, India will realise Wani was a freedom fighter.”

Muzaffar has lost two sons to violence in Kashmir now, a fact that he bears with courage. “Before Burhan my son Khalid, who is four years elder to him, was killed in April 2015 by the security forces when he’d gone for a picnic. He was tortured to death.”

Police had thought that Khalid had gone to meet Burhan when they picked him.

Burhan Wani who was born in 1994 left his house in 2010 to join the freedom struggle. After this he met him just once or twice. His loss, he adds, is difficult to bear.

“In the last five years, I met him two or three times for just around two or three minutes. The last time was two-and-half years ago. He was always on his own. I am in a government job for my family. He was working for entire J&K.”

But he adds, that the fact that his sons left him was “Allah’s will”.

He maintains that Burhan never killed anyone. “He was only issuing warnings. He wept when eight CRPF men had died.”

As an Indian citizen who feels ignored he has complains with his Prime Minister Modi. “More than 100 people have been killed in Kashmir in the last two months. He hasn’t shown any grief. He only expressed grief over the killing of soldiers.”

Muzaffar thinks that the Uri attack was not carried out by Pakistan.

“How can it be Pakistan? Whoever entered Kashmir after becoming a militant is a Kashmiri. It’s necessary to solve the Kashmir problem. Else, these attacks may happen.”

He also appreciates Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s speech in the United Nations.

Muzaffar, an old man who has suffered the violence in his region longs for peace. We’ve lost so much in the last two months. We want some resolution.”

For his son and daughter who still live with him he hopes they understand the value of peace.

“I am certain Naveed will not [resort to violence]. I would want my daughter Irm Jahan, who is in college, to become a teacher.”

The Afghan immigrant who authorities believe planted bombs in New Jersey and New York this weekend was captured Monday after a dramatic gun battle with police that was sparked when officers found him sleeping in the doorway of a bar.

Officials had launched a dragnet earlier Monday in search of Ahmad Khan Rahami, the 28-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen who was identified as the primary person of interest in the Saturday night blast in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, an explosion in New Jersey’s Seaside Park on Saturday morning and a foiled bomb attack Sunday night near a train station in Elizabeth, NJ.

The hunt for Rahami turned out to be brief. A bar owner in Linden, NJ spotted a man sleeping in his doorway Monday morning and called police. An officer confronted the man around 10:45 a.m., and soon recognized the person as Rahami, officials said. Rahami pulled out a gun and shot the officer, identifed by the Linden mayor’s office as Angel Padilla, in the abdomen. Padilla was wearing a bulletproof vest.

A second police officer, idenitifed as Investigator Pete Hammer, had a bullet graze his head. Both officers were expected to be okay.

Rahami was shot at least once in the leg and eventually brought down and captured alive, Union County Prosecutor Grace Park said. He was taken to University Hospital in Newark where he underwent surgery, Fox News confirmed.

Rahami was charged late Monday in Union County with five counts of attempted murder of a police officer. He was being held on $5.2 million bail and remained at a hospital. It wasn’t known if Rahami had an attorney, as messages left with phone numbers listed for family members by the Associated Press weren’t returned. Federal charges in the bombings have yet to be filed.

Linden, the city where Rahami was captured, is about four miles from Elizabeth, where Rahami was last known to have lived. The FBI had launched a raid at his apartment, located above a fried chicken restaurant, on Monday morning. Elizabeth is also the city where investigators discovered five suspicious devices — one of which exploded while a bomb squad robot tried to disarm it — near a train station on Sunday night.

“Today I believe we’re going to find out that [the bombing] was influenced by foreign sources,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday on “Fox & Friends.”

Two U.S. officials told Reuters on Monday that the bomb plot likely involved several individuals, a revelation that came hours after federal authorities on Sunday night conducted a traffic stop in Brooklyn of a “vehicle of interest” in the bombings.

Officials said Monday that the car was identified after having been at a location associated with Rahami. The individuals in the vehicle were no longer in custody, the FBI said Monday.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio noted during a Monday news conference that authorities weren’t currently searching for any other suspects. The assistant director of the FBI’s field office in New York, William Sweeney Jr., said “there is no indication that there’s a cell” in the area.

Following the Chelsea explosion — which injured 29 people — on West 23rd Street at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, police found a second, unexploded device four blocks away. The device was described as a pressure cooker with wires and a phone attached. The contraption, which bore a resemblance to the bomb used in the 2013 Boston Marathon attack, was placed in a plastic bag.

Officials said Rahami’s fingerprint was found on the unexploded bomb discovered on West 27th Street. Authorities were still searching for two people who removed that bomb from a duffle bag after it had allegedly been placed on the street by Rahami. The pair placed the device in a plastic bag and then walked off with the duffel bag. Police said the individuals were only considered witnesses.

The Chelsea bombing came 11 hours after a pipe bomb exploded about 80 miles south in a New Jersey garbage can near the route of a charity 5K race. That explosion occurred in Seaside Park, a borough about 60 miles from Elizabeth. No one was injured in that blast. Runners were slated to be near the location of the explosion when it went off, but the race was delayed after an unattended backpack was discovered.

Authorities said the New York and New Jersey bombs used flip phones as detonators. Several media outlets also reported the New York bombs contained shrapnel consisting of ball bearings and BBs.

Local and federal officials said Rahami had not been on law enforcement’s radar before the explosions, and the FBI said they had no knowledge of Rahami receiving any weapons or explosives training overseas.