Hurricane Gonzalo gained strength in the Atlantic today as it barreled toward Bermuda, which was bracing for a hit from the powerful Category Four storm.
	Gonzalo's winds were whirling at 145 miles (233 kilometres) per hour, taking it back up a notch on the five-point Saffir-Simpson scale, the US National Hurricane Center said.
	It was expected to pass near Bermuda, which could see flooding along the coast. Gonzalo, which has already killed one person in the Caribbean, triggered a hurricane warning for the British overseas territory.
	Bermuda Premier Michael Dunkley said government offices and schools would be closed Friday in the grouping of islands home to about 60,000 people.
	The international airport was expected to shutter from late Thursday until at least Saturday.
	At 1500 GMT, the storm was located about 485 miles south-southwest of the Bermudian archipelago. It was moving north at seven miles per hour, according to the Miami-based NHC.
	"This general motion is expected to ...

Bermuda braces for Gonzalo

PTI Automatic

Lawyers for a leading activist from Pakistan's embattled Shiite Hazara community made a last-minute bid today to stop his deportation from Britain despite having received death threats from Sunni militants in his homeland.
	Liaquat Ali Hazara, 36, told AFP in a phone interview from the detention centre where he is being held in England that his lawyers had applied to cancel the expulsion set for Tuesday.
	"I fear they can disappear me from the airport upon my arrival," Hazara said, speaking from Morton Hall Immigration Removal Centre near Lincoln, central England.
	Hazara's minority community has been attacked on many occasions by the Al-Qaeda-linked hardline militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and the Hazaras often travel accompanied by security squads to avoid killings.
	"A person like me, who has a raised political and human rights stature, I could be an easy target for them," he said.
	The campaigner came to Britain in 2005 to study accountancy and began his political activities in ..

Pakistani campaigner fights deportation from Britain

Turkey's ruling party today said it was optimistic about the prospects for the peace process with Kurdish rebels after a surge in violence raised concern about its viability.
	The spokesman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Besir Atalay told reporters the government was about to complete a roadmap aimed at ending the three-decade old Kurdish insurgency.
	His comments came a day after the expiry of a deadline set by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) -- whose rebellion for self-rule in southeast Turkey has claimed more than 40,000 lives -- for the government to come up with a roadmap.
	"The roadmap has now largely been completed and we are sharing its details with the other (Kurdish) parties," Atalay told reporters in Ankara.
	"New dialogues will be opened up soon and new meetings will be held," he said. "There are no setbacks. We will stick to the timeframe we have set.
	"We are sincere about the peace process and committed to moving it forward."
	PKK leader Abdullah ..

Turkey's Kurdish peace process on track: ruling party

Bangladesh police said today they had foiled an attempt by suspected Islamic militants to murder an "atheist" school teacher in the capital, amid concerns a banned hardline outfit is reforming.
	Police fired on the militants from banned group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) whom officers had stopped by chance yesterday near the teacher's home in north Dhaka, a local police chief said.
	Police arrested one militant and seized two syringes full of a poisonous liquid and a pistol, while two other suspected militants fled, Atiqur Rahman told AFP.
	"Our patrol team stopped the car for routine check, but the three men got out and opened fire at us. Officers were forced to retaliate by firing live rounds," Rahman said.
	"We thought they were a group of muggers, but during interrogation (militant) Rubel admitted they were heading to murder a teacher at a school for what they said were his atheist views," Rahman said.
	The group believed that the teacher held anti-Islamic views, had ...

Bangladesh police foil militant plot to kill 'atheist' teacher

From a copy of the medieval Gutenberg bible to Karl Marx's Capital, an exhibition opening at the British Museum in London explores 600 years of German history frequently overshadowed by Nazi horrors.
	The show "Germany, memories of a nation" runs until January, with an iconic 1953 Volkswagen Beetle car gracing the museum's entrance hall.
	The post-war vehicle serves as a symbol for a show that seeks to get beyond tired World War II cliches about Germany that have proved particularly persistent in Britain.
	"There is this focus especially on the period of the Third Reich, and any section of German history books in Britain will be overwhelmingly dominated by the World War II," Barrie Cook, one of the exhibition's curators, told AFP.
	"That is a very strong focus of how we think about Germany's history and the modern German has to deal with that immediate legacy," he said.
	The exhibition confronts that period head on, displaying a replica of the sign outside the Buchenwald concentration 

Don't mention the war! London show tackles German cliches

Angola, Malaysia, New Zealand and Venezuela were elected to the UN Security Council today, leaving Turkey and Spain to face off in a second vote for the coveted seat.
	The four countries won the required two-thirds of votes during the election at the UN General Assembly.
	The 193-nation assembly was voting to fill five non-permanent seats at the Security Council, the UN's top body with authority to decide on sanctions and the use of force.
	Angola won 190 votes, Malaysia garnered 187 and Venezuela 181.  All three countries ran unopposed as their candidacies had been put forward by their region.
	New Zealand, which picked up 145 votes, ran against Spain and Turkey for two seats. A new round of balloting was set to decide on the winner after Spain picked up 121 votes and Turkey 109.
	The five new members will begin their two-year term at the council in January.

Angola, Malaysia, New Zealand, Venezuela elected to UN Council

At least 36 people have died and more than 8,000 houses have been destroyed by flooding in heavy rain that has drenched Niger since June, the UN said today.
	Cases of cholera have risen in some zones, it said. In September alone, 641 cases were recorded, with 38 deaths.
	In all, some 68,000 people have been affected by the flood disaster, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the poor African country said in an online statement.
	Niger's three-month wet season is due to end soon. The country is often prey to severe food crises caused by droughts and floods.

36 dead in Niger flooding since June: UN

Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi will lead a ministerial delegation to war-ravaged Gaza on October 23, an official said today.
	The delegation will include Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled al-Sabah and Mauritanian Foreign Minister Ahmed Ould Teguedi, the League official told reporters in Cairo.
	"The visit is in solidarity with the Gaza Strip, which was subjected to comprehensive destruction by the last Israeli aggression, and to understand its needs," the official said on condition of anonymity.
	Details of the itinerary were not immediately available.
	The one-day visit comes after an international donors conference in Cairo hosted by Egypt and Norway on Sunday pledged USD 5.4 billion (4.3 billion euros) to rebuild Gaza.
	Donations mainly included USD 1 billion from Qatar, USD 212 million from the United States and 450 million euros from the European Union.
	   The July-August war between Israel and the coastal territory's Hamas rulers left nearly 2,200 Palestinians dead 

Arab League chief to lead delegation to Gaza

Top US health officials braced for a grilling today by lawmakers infuriated over the nation's fumbling response to the Ebola outbreak, as the Obama administration scrambles to contain the disease's spread.
	Centres for Disease Control director Thomas Frieden has become the most prominent target of the criticism, which has mounted as a second Texas health care worker became infected with the deadly disease after treating a Liberian man who died of Ebola last week.
	Some lawmakers have demanded Frieden's resignation and others have accused President Barack Obama of a lack of leadership, while congressional leaders urge a travel ban to the US on everyone from West Africa's three Ebola-hit nations: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
	"I'd like to see the president use executive powers to begin to restrict travel. That's the key," Tim Murphy, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight, which is holding today's hearing, told CNN.
	Other lawmakers including House ...

US health chiefs in hot seat over flawed Ebola response

Spain's Ferrovial, which holds a leading share in London's Heathrow airport, said today it is buying three more British hubs for 1.3 billion euros (USD 1.6 billion) with Australian group Macquarie.
	The two construction giants struck a deal to jointly buy the airports in the Scottish cities of Glasgow and Aberdeen and the southern English city of Southampton for 1.0 billion pounds, Ferrovial said in a statement.
	A consortium owned half by Ferrovial's airport subsidiary and half by "Macquarie Infrastructure Fund 4" has reached a deal to buy all the shares in the airports, currently owned by Heathrow Airport Holdings.
	More than 10 million passengers passed through the three airports between January and September this year, according to the holding company.
	The deal is subject to approval by European regulators and is expected to be sealed by January 2015, the statement said.
	Ferrovial has been expanding overseas as Spain slowly recovers from the crash of its domestic construction ...

Ferrovial, Macquarie buy three British airports

Rebels killed 26 people with machetes in an attack in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo as the authorities in Kinshasa demanded the recall today of the top UN human rights official in the country.
	The massacre in the town of Beni calls into question claims by the authorities that Ugandan rebels of the ADF-NALU, who have been terrorising the east of Congo for the last two decades, were all but defeated.
	It comes as the Congolese government -- which has been fighting the rebels alongside a contingent of UN peacekeepers -- declared the UN's top human rights official Scott Campbell "persona non grata", after a UN report published yesterday denounced rights violations by the police.
	The bloody attack happened in the Ngadai area on the northern edge of Beni, a town of half a million people mostly from the Nande ethnic group, which is a major hub for wood destined for Uganda.
	The rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces and National Army for the Liberation of Uganda have ...

Rebels kill 26 in DRC machete attack as UN chief told to leave

Facebook has unveiled a "safety check" tool to allow users to alert friends and family about their status in emergencies, a system developed after the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami.
	"We want to provide a helpful tool that people can use when major disasters strike, so we've created 'safety check' - a simple and easy way to say you're safe and check on others," a Facebook blog post said late yesterday.
	Facebook said it began working on the system after the Japan disaster: "During that crisis, we saw how people used technology and social media to stay connected with those they cared about," the statement said.
	The new tool expands on its "disaster message board" used in Japan.
	In "safety check," users in areas affected by a disaster will get a notification asking "Are you OK?"
	Users can select to click "I'm safe" and status updates will be sent to friends.
	Facebook will use a user's smartphone location to determine if someone is affected by a catastrophe, while allowing people 

Facebook unveils 'safety check' for disaster efforts

Iran's foreign minister said today that Tehran opposes extending troubled nuclear talks beyond a November 24 deadline, even though major stumbling blocks remain in the way of a deal.
	"We only have 40 days left to the deadline and... None of the negotiators find (an) extension of talks appropriate," Mohammad Javad Zarif said in Vienna, a day after six hours of intense talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry.
	"We share this view... And we think there is no need to even think about it," Zarif said in the Austrian capital, quoted by the state televison's website.
	The comments echoed a senior US State Department official late yesterday after the talks between Kerry, Zarif and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton in a Vienna hotel room.
	"Deadlines help people to make hard decisions, and there are hard decisions to be made here. And we must," the official said on condition of anonymity.
	Kerry left Vienna on this morning - after problems with his aircraft - but Zarif remained for 

Iran opposes extending troubled nuclear talks

Moscow today denied a US assertion that it had agreed to ramp up intelligence-sharing with Washington over the Islamic State group, saying it would provide no such help without UN Security Council approval.
	The statement by Russia's foreign ministry contradicted a declaration by US Secretary of State John Kerry made after a meeting in Paris on Tuesday with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.
	Moscow "will not join any 'coalition' set up without the backing of the UN Security Council and that violates international law," the ministry said.
	It pointed out that a bilateral commission involving Washington and Moscow that aimed to help tackle terrorism had been scrapped by the US.
	Moscow also added that it was already giving "significant help" to countries including Syria and Iraq and would continue to do so.
	The slapdown to Kerry appeared to underline yet again the fraught state of US-Russian relations, brought low by the crisis in Ukraine where pro-Russian rebels are fighting a ...

Russia denies agreed with US to share intel on IS militants

The United Nations voted today to pick five new members to the Security Council, with New Zealand, Spain and Turkey locked in a tight race for seats at the world's "top table."
	Angola, Venezuela and Malaysia are virtually assured to win support from the 193-nation UN General Assembly as they are running unopposed from their region.
	That left two seats to be filled by the three competing countries which sent their foreign ministers to New York this week to lead a last-ditch lobbying campaign for votes.
	For the contenders, a council seat is the ultimate diplomatic prize, raising a country's profile several notches, boosting influence and providing knockoff benefits in bilateral ties.
	General Assembly president Sam Kutesa opened the voting shortly after 1400 GMT with a first round of secret ballots distributed to the delegates, which were then collected for counting.
	Countries must garner support from two-thirds of those present to win a seat.
	New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key .

UN votes to fill coveted Security Council seats

An Italian nurse who took photographs of herself with dead patients has been accused of murdering one of them and may be behind the deaths of dozens of others, according to Italian media reports.
	Daniela Poggiali, 42, was arrested after an autopsy on a 78-year-old woman who died in her care revealed dangerous levels of potassium in her system.
	Since then, details of the case have been leaked slowly to the media, alongside photographs of the blond nurse smiling in holiday snaps and grinning next to apparently dead patients.
	The Umberto I Hospital in Lugo in northern Italy launched an investigation after it discovered that she was on duty when 38 of 86 patients during a three month period died, while the average number of deaths when her colleagues were on duty was 10.
	Poggiali, who reportedly had a bad relationship with the others on the ward, is accused of injecting "annoying" patients with a massive dose of potassium, the reports said.
	Potassium can stop the heart and is one of .

Nurse who took selfies with dead patients accused of murder

A Chinese army singer who mysteriously disappeared from public view six years ago has made a surprising reappearance in local media -- as the wife of the President Xi Jinping's brother.
	In a rare glimpse into the life of the Xi family, a newspaper in the southern city of Shenzhen quoted the Communist leader's younger brother Xi Yuanping describing his marriage to singer Zhang Lanlan.
	Zhang was a mainstay on glitzy Chinese TV shows for years, but reportedly made no further appearances after singing in China's annual official new year gala in 2008.
	The report, which was quickly deleted from Chinese websites, quoted Xi Yuanping, 58, as saying that he had married the 34-year old Zhang -- nicknamed the "military's top beautiful woman" -- the same year.
	"Lanlan is a simple and sincere woman," the report -- which showed the two seated together -- quoted Xi as saying.
	Xi Jinping similarly married military singer Peng Liyuan, who was herself for many years a mainstay of the new year gala .

Singer resurfaces married to China president's brother

Britain will shortly begin re-deploying its unmanned armed drones from Afghanistan to counter Islamic State jihadists in Iraq, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has told the British parliament.
	The remotely-piloted Reaper planes will provide surveillance, reconnaissance and intelligence support to the Iraqi troops and international coalition forces taking on the IS group in northern Iraq.
	They can also launch bombs and missiles.
	It will be the first time Britain has deployed Reapers outside of Afghanistan, where Britain is completing a pull-out of combat troops this year.
	"We are in the process of re-deploying some of our Reaper remotely-piloted aircraft from Afghanistan to the Middle East," Hammond said.
	Britain already has several Royal Air Force (RAF) Tornado fighter jets conducting bombing raids on Islamic State targets in Iraq.
	"The surveillance capability of Reaper will see it provide vital situational awareness, making it an invaluable asset to the Iraqi government and the 

Britain to re-deploy drones from Afghanistan to Iraq

One-drop batsman Alex Doolan hit a fighting hundred, but skipper Michael Clarke failed in Australia's four-day warm-up game against Pakistan 'A' in Sharjah today.
     Doolan's 104 anchored Australia's 273-8 at close on the second day at Sharjah stadium but top-order including Clarke did not get the much-needed practice.
     Pakistan 'A' had declared their first innings at their overnight score of 305-8 with skipper Asad Shafiq remaining not out on 108.
     Clarke, who is recovering from a hamstring injury sustained on the tour of Zimbabwe in August, looked well set during his 31-ball stay of 10 runs before being caught at point off paceman Ehsan Adil.
     Openers Chris Rogers (nought) and Phil Hughes (14) also didn't last long for Australia's liking ahead of the first of two Tests starting in Dubai from October 22.
     But Doolan in company of Steven Smith (58), man-of-the-series in Australia's 3-0 rout of Pakistan in the preceding one-day series, added 106 for the fourth wicket .

Doolan hits hundred as Clarke fails in warm-up

Nine out of ten of the world's 570 million farms are managed by families and it is they who hold the key to eradicating global hunger, the United Nations said in a report today.
	"Family farms produce about 80 per cent of the world's food and... Are the custodians of about 75 per cent of all agricultural resources in the world," according to the report by the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
	That makes them a "crucial agent of change in achieving sustainable food security and in eradicating hunger in the future," it said.
	Their prevalence and output mean they "are vital to the solution of the hunger problem" afflicting more than 800 million people, FAO head Jose Graziano da Silva said in the State of Food and Agriculture 2014 report.
	Although the UN announced in September that the number of hungry people in the world has dropped by 100 million over the last 10 years, one in nine are still undernourished and about 842 million people remain chronically hungry ...

Family farms crucial in fight to eradicate hunger: UN

Japanese authorities today called off the search for seven hikers still missing on a volcano that unexpectedly erupted last month, as wintry conditions made the search operation increasingly difficult.
	Troops, firefighters and police have been scouring Mount Ontake in central Japan for the missing climbers since the volcano erupted without warning on September 27, killing at least 56, in Japan's deadliest eruption for almost 90 years.
	"We have decided to call off the operation for the rest of this year," said an official of the crisis-management office of Nagano prefecture, where the volcano sits.
	"Snowfalls and freezing on the slope ahead of this year's full-fledged winter were already adding to the tough conditions up there," the official said.
	"We won't carry out the large-scale operation, but we may begin a small-sized one next year when spring comes," he added.
	Rescue workers have described the slopes of the volcano as being smothered in thick, sticky ash, up to half a metre 

AFP

AFP

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