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  • Mali Tuareg Rrebels Pull Out of Peace Deal

    Mali Tuareg Rrebels Pull Out of Peace Deal

    {{Tuareg separatists in Mali say they are suspending participation in a peace deal, accusing the government of not respecting the accord reached in June.}}

    Three Tuareg groups meeting in Burkina Faso called for an emergency meeting of all parties to the peace agreement.

    A ceasefire enabled national elections and allowed Mali’s military to return to the northern Tuareg town of Kidal.

    President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita wants to stabilise Mali after a French-led offensive pushed Islamist rebels north.

    In a statement late Thursday, Mossa Ag Acharatoumane, a founding member of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) accused the Malian government of failing to live up to its promises made in the June agreement, signed in the capital of neighbouring Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou.

    “Everything that they promised us in the accord has not been respected,” he told media.

    Neither the Malian government nor the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali was immediately available for comment.

    Tuareg separatists have said that the government has not yet started prisoner releases in line with the Ouagadougou agreement. But observers say Tuareg fighters have been moving outside their bases in Kidal.

    The deal had stipulated that the separatists would garrison their fighters.

    A Tuareg rebellion in 2012 made considerable territorial gains. It led to heavy soldier casualties and stoked discontent within the Malian military.

    The tensions triggered a military coup in the Malian capital, Bamako. Then authorities faced an Islamist rebellion which was fought back with French-led military intervention.

  • Nigerian Women Demand Husbands

    Nigerian Women Demand Husbands

    {{A demand by 8,000 Nigerian women for help to get married will be considered, the Zamfara state government has said.}}

    A group of women marched through Gusau city to hand in their petition to the religious police in the state which is partly governed by Islamic law.

    Traditionally women need to provide furniture for the marital home, but this is too expensive for some of those seeking husbands.

    The women belong to an association that acts as a match-making service.

    The Zamfara Widows Association represents divorcees, widows and orphaned girls looking to find suitable Muslim husbands.

    {{‘Money-demanding traditions’}}

    “Many of us cannot afford two meals in a day because there are no men to support us,” Nigeria’s Premium Times quotes the women on Thursday’s march as saying.

    Abdullahi Muhammad Shinkafi, the commissioner of religious affairs for Zamfara state government told media he understood their plight and need for financial assistance.

    “What the widows are after is to get married… and in Nigeria in particular, there are a lot of traditions that are money-demanding in the process of getting married,” he told media.

    “That is why they marched and are seeking for the government’s attention.”

    He said their demands would be analysed as Zamfara did its best to help those living in poverty.

    Reporters in Kano state, also in northern Nigeria, the board of the religious police, or Hisbah, often organises mass weddings for poor widows and divorcees.

    The Hisbah pays for the wedding clothes, the bride price to be paid by the groom and the furniture to be provided by the bride.

    But Mr Shinkafi said budgetary restraints might not lead to a speedy solution for the women.

    “It is one thing to bring couples together, it is another to sustain their living,” he said.

  • Toyota & Nissan Issue Fresh Vehicle Recalls

    Toyota & Nissan Issue Fresh Vehicle Recalls

    {{Japanese carmakers Toyota and Nissan have issued fresh vehicle recalls.}}

    Toyota is calling back 615,000 Sienna minivans in the US to fix a lever problem that could cause vehicles to shift out of park mode “without the driver depressing the brake pedal”.

    Toyota said that it was aware of 24 “minor accidents” due to the issue.

    Meanwhile, Nissan said it is recalling 908,900 vehicles globally due to a flaw in an accelerator sensor but added that no accidents had been reported.

    Nissan said the accelerator pedal’s sensor could become unstable, leading to a less-than-intended acceleration. It added that in a worst case scenario, the engine could stall.

    Its recall affects Infiniti M, Serena, X-Trail, Lafesta and Fuga models produced in Japan between 2004 and 2013.

    Toyota’s recall applies to models made during 2004 to 2005 and 2007 to 2009.

    This is the second time in a month that Toyota has issued a recall of its vehicles in the US market.

    Earlier in September, it issued a recall for more than 780,000 vehicles in the US to address a suspension defect in its RAV4 and Lexus HS 250h models, on fears that an initial recall last year did not fix the problem.

    {agencies}

  • At Least 3 Killed in Explosion at Paris Work Site

    At Least 3 Killed in Explosion at Paris Work Site

    {{At least three people were killed and one seriously injured in an explosion in the centre of the French capital Paris on Friday.}}

    Another person has been reported missing, believed to be trapped under the rubble.

    The apparently accidental explosion took place at around 3.45pm in the car park of a building in the city’s tenth arrondissement, where construction work was taking place, police told media.

    The force of the blast caused surrounding structures to shake, while a building across from the site of the explosion was evacuated and the fire brigade was reinforcing its foundations to avoid collapse, a fireman told media.

    Workers were carrying out repairs on a fuel tank at the time of the explosion late on Friday afternoon, the media reported, and preliminary findings suggest oil vapours that had accumulated at the bottom of the tank may have ignited.

    An investigation has been launched to determine the exact cause of the blast, said Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë.

    “The circumstances of this tragedy are not yet determined and the investigation will shed light on this terrible accident, ” he said in a statement.

    A medical post was set up near the building, located on the Rue d’Enghien, while rescuers used dogs to search for the missing person.

    French Interior Minister Manuel Valls arrived on the scene shortly after 5pm, but declined to make a statement.

  • Greek Police Arrest Leader of Extreme-Right Party

    Greek Police Arrest Leader of Extreme-Right Party

    {{Greek police arrested the leader, two lawmakers and party members from the far-right Golden Dawn party on Saturday, and charged one member with being an accomplice to the killing of an anti-fascist rapper, a police official said.}}

    Police said party leader Nikolaos Mihaloliakos, spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris, two other lawmakers and 10 members had been arrested on charges of founding a criminal organisation. They are due to appear in court this weekend to be formally charged.

    Golden Dawn, ranked Greece’s third most popular party in opinion polls, is under investigation for the murder of Pavlos Fissas which sparked violent protests and a crackdown on political extremism.

    The party has denied any links to the killing and Mihaloliakos has warned the party could pull its 18 lawmakers from parliament if the crackdown does not stop.

    If potential by-elections were won by the opposition, as some polls indicate, Greece’s fragile two-party coalition would become politically untenable, Mihaloliakos has argued.

    “Shame on them, the people will lift Golden Dawn higher,” Ilias Panagiotaros, a Golden Dawn lawmakers told reporters before his arrest.

    The party has 18 out of parliament’s 300 lawmakers and scored 14 percent of voter support in opinion polls before the stabbing. A poll this week showed its backing had fallen to as low as 6.7 percent.

    Greek lawmakers do not lose their political rights or seats unless there is a final court ruling against them but the government has proposed a law that could block state funding for Golden Dawn if police find links to Fissas’s murder.

    reuters

  • French Hostage of Boko Haram Pleads for Help in Video

    French Hostage of Boko Haram Pleads for Help in Video

    {{A French hostage kidnapped by Islamist militants in Nigeria has asked for French and Nigerian government help in securing his release in a video released by his captors, according to the SITE web monitoring service.}}

    If the video is confirmed as authentic it would be the first visual sign of life from Francis Collomp since around 30 gunmen stormed his compound on December 19 in the remote northern Nigerian town of Rimi, close to the Niger border where al Qaeda’s North African wing operates.

    Western governments are increasingly concerned about Islamist militants in Africa’s Sahel region because of the risk it could become a platform for international jihadist attacks.

    Ansaru militants said soon after Collomp’s abduction that he had been taken in retaliation for France’s planned military action against jihadi insurgents in nearby Mali, launched a month later, and its ban on wearing the full-face veil.

    Collomp, 63, an engineer who was working for French renewable energy firm Vergnet, appeared in the three-minute video posted on a jihadi forum which he said was filmed on September 25.

    “It is urgent that my family and friends and my fellow citizens of France and anyone else that can do something. The French and the Nigerian governments should (get involved} for my sake and {pursue} negotiations for my safe release, please,” Collomp, wearing a white T-shirt with an unidentified armed man stood behind him, said in the video, speaking in English.

    An Arabic-language message displayed at the end of the video said, according to SITE, “If you want to repeat your crazy ways in dealing with the events with excessive violence, then we will deal with you … Everything that happened to this French hostage is on you.” The message contained no clear demands.

    A spokesman for the French foreign ministry said the video was being analyzed and it had informed the Collomp family.

    Britain has put Ansaru on its official “terrorist group” list, saying it is aligned with al Qaeda and was behind the kidnapping of a British and a Italian who were killed last year during a failed rescue attempt.

    Ansaru’s full name is Jama’atu Ansarul Musilimina Fi Biladis Sudan, which roughly translates as “Vanguards for the Protection of Muslims in Black Africa”.

    The group claimed responsibility for a dawn raid on a major police station in the Nigerian capital Abuja in November, where it said hundreds of prisoners were released.

    It is thought to have loose ties to the better-known Islamist militant sect Boko Haram, which has killed thousands in a four-year-long insurgency focused mostly on Nigerian security forces, religious targets and politicians.

    Boko Haram and splinter groups like Ansaru pose the biggest security threat in Africa’s second biggest economy and top oil exporter, a major supplier to the Europe, Brazil and India.

    {agencies}

  • 3,000 Protesters on Khartoum Streets Demand Bashir Quit

    3,000 Protesters on Khartoum Streets Demand Bashir Quit

    {{More than 3,000 protesters took to the streets of the Sudanese capital Khartoum on Saturday to demand President Omar Hassan al-Bashir quit, witnesses said, after days of unrest in which dozens of people have been killed.}}

    Daily demonstrations this week followed the government cutting fuel and cooking gas subsidies on Monday when pump prices doubled overnight.

    Four protesters were shot dead by unidentified gunmen on Friday, police said, bringing the official death toll to 33.

    In Khartoum’s Burri district, home to a top government official, more than 1,000 people gathered for the funeral of one of the victims, Salah Sanhuri, a doctor from a prominent merchant family with strong ties to the government.

    More than 2,000 people joined the funeral procession, shouting, “Freedom, freedom,” and “The people want to overthrow the regime”, blocking a main road, witnesses said.

    On Friday, more than 5,000 people demonstrated in Khartoum, the biggest turnout in central Sudan for many years. Its borderlands have grappled with insurgencies for decades but the relatively wealthy heartland has seen little turmoil in the recent past.

    Police said in a statement unknown gunmen had opened fire on a group of protesters on Friday, killing four people.

    Khartoum has been brimming for days with armed civilians and security personnel carrying rifles, patrolling streets in broad daylight and manning rooftops. Opposition activists have accused Bashir’s National Congress Party of vandalism and of arming militias to turn the public against the protesters.

    Bashir, who seized power in a 1989 coup, has not faced the sort of Arab Spring uprising that unseated autocratic rulers from Tunisia to Yemen since 2011, but anger has risen over corruption and rising inflation in the vast African country.

    He has stayed in power despite rebellions, U.S. trade sanctions, an economic crisis, an attempted coup last year and an indictment from the International Criminal Court for war crimes. He still enjoys support from the army, his ruling party and many business men.

    The subsidy cuts have been driven by a severe financial crunch since the secession of oil-producing South Sudan in 2011, which deprived Khartoum of three-quarters of the crude output it relied on for state revenues and food imports.

    Amnesty International and the New York-based African Center for Justice and Peace Studies said at least 50 people had been killed by gunshots to the chest or head by Thursday night, citing witnesses, relatives, doctors and journalists.

  • U.N. Security Council Demands Elimination of Syria Chemical Arms

    U.N. Security Council Demands Elimination of Syria Chemical Arms

    {{The U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution on Friday that demands the eradication of Syria’s chemical weapons but does not threaten automatic punitive action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government if it does not comply.}}

    The unanimous vote by the 15-member Security Council capped weeks of intense diplomacy between Russia and the United States. It was based on a deal between the two countries reached in Geneva earlier this month following an August 21 sarin nerve gas attack on a Damascus suburb that killed hundreds.

    The U.S.-Russia deal averted punitive U.S. military action against Assad’s government, which Washington blamed for the August attack. The Syrian government and its ally, Russia, blamed anti-government rebels for the attack.

    One provision of the resolution, described by council diplomats as significant, formally endorses a plan for a political transition in Syria agreed on at an international conference in Geneva in June 2012.

    U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said after the vote that the big powers hoped to hold a peace conference on Syria in mid-November in Geneva.

    He told the council the plan to eradicate Syria’s chemical weapons was “not a license to kill with conventional weapons.”

    “As we mark this important step, we must never forget that the catalog of horrors in Syria continues with bombs and tanks, grenades and guns,” he said. “A red light for one form of weapons does not mean a green light for others.”

    U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the vote showed that “actions have consequences.”

    “Our original objective was to degrade and deter Syria’s chemical weapons capability. And the option of military force that President Obama has kept on the table could have achieved that. But tonight’s resolution accomplishes even more – through peaceful means, it will for the first time seek to eliminate entirely a nation’s chemical weapons capability,” he said.

    The resolution does not allow for automatic punitive action in the form of military strikes or sanctions if Syria does not comply. At Russia’s insistence, Friday’s resolution makes clear a second council decision would be needed for that.

    But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Security Council would be prepared to take punitive steps in the event of confirmed violations of the resolution by either side in the conflict.

  • Daydreaming While Driving Causes 62% Accidents

    Daydreaming While Driving Causes 62% Accidents

    {{You might think you’re a good driver. But you, like all other drivers, tend to daydream behind the wheel. Why? It has to do with the way nature wired your brain. }}

    Because millions of sensations bombard us every second, the brain sorts through them to allow only the most important ones to become conscious—for instance, you don’t notice what’s in your peripheral vision unless something moves there.

    It’s just the way the brain evolved to protect it from self-destructing.

    If it allowed too many sensations to get through, we would be paralyzed by the massive sensory overload. The downside to this is that your mind has a narrow attention span, so it likes to wander—a lot.

    That beer you’re thinking about having when you get home from work could distract you long enough to expose you to danger while behind the wheel. Daydreaming can’t be eliminated, only minimized.

    Just how dangerous is daydreaming while driving? When the Erie Insurance Group studied 65,000 fatal crashes over a two-year span (2010–11), its researchers found that one in 10 were attributed to driver distraction, and 62% were blamed on daydreaming—five times as many as talking or texting on a mobile phone.

    The study was based on a nationwide database, kept by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, called the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, or FARS, that tracks all vehicle deaths. “The results were disturbing,” says Erie senior vice president Doug Smith.

    What’s sneaky about daydream driving is that you may feel totally aware of your environment but be out of conscious contact with it. You’re not really seeing what you’re looking at. For example, most of us know the sensation of suddenly snapping to attention during a long stretch of highway or getting home from a drive and not remembering parts of the trip.

    While your conscious mind wanders off, your subconscious takes over the wheel. Yes, an emergency can jar you back to full awareness, but your reaction time and sense of perception will suffer when you’re not paying full attention.

    If you can’t eliminate daydream driving, how can you minimize it?

    • Keep your eyes moving. Change your gaze every 2 seconds. Any longer and you tend to stare, which induces mind wandering and narrowing of peripheral vision. Tiring? No. The eyes were designed to keep in motion.

    • To keep alert, interact with your environs by imagining “what-if” scenarios. What if that oncoming car crosses over? What if that truck ahead suddenly stops?

    All those what-ifs you’re visualizing feed your subconscious with some valuable data to reprogram your brain for your benefit. They may provide you with a better accident-evasion plan than the one you’ve imagined should a similar event actually happen.

    • Chew something. Really. Crunchy foods will keep you alert. Even chewing gum works. One psychology professor advised drivers to chew peanut brittle, calories notwithstanding. Besides the noise made from crunching, he said that searching for the peanuts was oral therapy.

    • Try different driving routes when possible. Driving the same long route is boring, and your mind is more prone to wander when it encounters the same repetitive conditions. It’s called habituation.

    Perry Buffington, a medical columnist, says, “simply put, we get used to things, and when we do, they’re no longer important to us.” Daydreaming results. And you notice fewer things when you’re bored, even if you’re not daydreaming.

    If you want to become more alert behind the wheel, you must first want to. But even with the best intentions, you still have to be on guard. Daydream driving will hit you when you least expect it.

    wirestory

  • UN ‘95% Sure’ Humans Cause Warming

    UN ‘95% Sure’ Humans Cause Warming

    {{A landmark report says scientists are 95% certain that humans are the “dominant cause” of global warming since the 1950s.}}

    The report by the UN’s climate panel details the physical evidence behind climate change.

    On the ground, in the air, in the oceans, global warming is “unequivocal”, it explained.

    It adds that a pause in warming over the past 15 years is too short to reflect long-term trends.

    The panel warns that continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and changes in all aspects of the climate system.

    To contain these changes will require “substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions”.

    Projections are based on assumptions about how much greenhouse gases might be released.

    After a week of intense negotiations in the Swedish capital, the summary for policymakers on the physical science of global warming has finally been released.

    The first part of an IPCC trilogy, due over the next 12 months, this dense, 36-page document is considered the most comprehensive statement on our understanding of the mechanics of a warming planet.

    It states baldly that, since the 1950s, many of the observed changes in the climate system are “unprecedented over decades to millennia”.

    Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface, and warmer than any period since 1850, and probably warmer than any time in the past 1,400 years.

    “Our assessment of the science finds that the atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amount of snow and ice has diminished, the global mean sea level has risen and that concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased,” said Qin Dahe, co-chair of IPCC working group one, who produced the report.

    Speaking at a news conference in the Swedish capital, Prof Thomas Stocker, another co-chair, said that climate change “challenges the two primary resources of humans and ecosystems, land and water. In short, it threatens our planet, our only home”.

    Since 1950, the report’s authors say, humanity is clearly responsible for more than half of the observed increase in temperatures.

    But a so-called pause in the increase in temperatures in the period since 1998 is downplayed in the report. The scientists point out that this period began with a very hot El Nino year.

    “Trends based on short records are very sensitive to the beginning and end dates and do not in general reflect long-term climate trends,” the report says.

    Prof Stocker, added: “I’m afraid there is not a lot of public literature that allows us to delve deeper at the required depth of this emerging scientific question.

    “For example, there are not sufficient observations of the uptake of heat, particularly into the deep ocean, that would be one of the possible mechanisms to explain this warming hiatus.”

    “Likewise we have insufficient data to adequately assess the forcing over the last 10-15 years to establish a relationship between the causes of the warming.”

    However, the report does alter a key figure from the 2007 study. The temperature range given for a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere, called equilibrium climate sensitivity, was 2.0C to 4.5C in that report.

    In the latest document, the range has been changed to 1.5C to 4.5C. The scientists say this reflects improved understanding, better temperature records and new estimates for the factors driving up temperatures.
    BBC