This decade is set to be the hottest in history, the United Nations said Tuesday in an annual assessment outlining the ways in which climate change is outpacing humanity's ability to adapt to it.
The World Meterological Organization said global temperatures so far this year were 1.1 degrees Celsius (two degrees Farenheit) above the pre-industrial average between 1850-1900.
That puts 2019 on course to be in the top three warmest years ever recorded, and possibly the hottest non-El Nino year yet.
Man-made emissions from burning fossil fuels, building infrastructure, growing crops and transporting goods mean 2019 is set to break the record for atmospheric carbon concentrations, locking in further warming, the WMO said.
Oceans, which absorb 90 percent of the excess heat produced by greenhouse gases, are now at their highest recorded temperatures.
The world's seas are now a quarter more acidic than 150 years ago, threatening vital marine ecosystems upon which billions of people rely for ...

2010s hottest decade in history, UN says as emissions rise again

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The wealth of Zimbabwe's former longtime president Robert Mugabe was long a mystery. Now the first official list of assets to be made public says he left behind USD 10 million and several houses when he died in September.
Some in Zimbabwe view that estate as far too modest for Mugabe, who ruled for 37 years and was accused by critics of accumulating vast riches and presiding over grand corruption.
The report by the state-run Herald newspaper on Tuesday does not mention any overseas assets, though it is thought that Mugabe had properties in neighboring South Africa and in Asia.
The report says there appears to be no will, though lawyers are still looking for one. The report cites the lawyers as saying the law stipulates that Mugabe's wife, Grace, and children will inherit the property in that case.
Mugabe also left behind a farm, 10 cars and 11 hectares (27 acres) of land that included an orchard at his rural home where he was buried. His daughter, Bona, registered the estate on behalf 

Zimbabwe's Mugabe left behind $10 million and some houses

Former first lady Michelle Obama and Hollywood star Julia Roberts will be travelling to Malaysia to participate in the Leaders: Asia-Pacific program.
The event will take place in Kuala Lumpur, December 10 to 14 and on December 9, Roberts and Obama will stop in Vietnam as part of Obama foundation's 'Girls Opportunity Alliance' to meet with education organisations for adolescent girls in the country.
"In Malaysia, Mrs Obama and Ms Roberts will share reflections about their trip to Vietnam, as well as lessons from their own leadership journeys and their path-breaking careers," the Obama Foundation website posted.
Most of the Malaysian summit will be closed to the public, but a few of the events will be streamed online at obama.org, including a panel featuring Obama and Roberts on December 11.
Prior to this, Roberts teamed up with the Obama Foundation for a video to promote Global Girls Alliance. The video also featured celebrities like Meryl Streep, David Beckham, Anne Hathaway, Natalie .

Michelle Obama, Julia Roberts join hands to promote girl education in Asia

German prosecutors in charge of intelligence cases are due to take over an investigation into the killing of a former Chechen rebel commander by a Russian national in Berlin, German media reported on Tuesday.
Despite Russian denials, some German politicians and media have blamed Moscow for the assassination of 40-year-old Georgian national Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin's Kleiner Tiergarten park on August 23.
Khangoshvili was shot twice in the head at close range in an execution-style killing by a man who was reportedly seen by witnesses throwing a stone-laden bag with his gun into the river.
German police shortly afterwards arrested the man, a 49-year-old from the Russian republic of Chechnya who has been named officially only as Vadim S.
"The Federal Prosecutor's Office suspects Russian state agencies of having commissioned the murder," Der Spiegel said, adding that federal prosecutors were preparing to take over the case "in the coming days".
The Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily and ...

German spy prosecutors to take over Russian killer probe: reports

A rare canvas by French post-impressionist artist Paul Gauguin from his period on the Polynesian island of Tahiti is set to go on auction in Paris on Tuesday, with an estimate of 5 to 7 million euros ($5.5-7.7 million).
There is keen interest in the sale at the Artcurial auction house amid growing controversy over Gauguin's relationships with young girls in Tahiti and his depictions of them.
The painting, "Te Bourao II", is one of the few works by Gauguin from his Tahiti period still in private hands. It dates from 1897 and shows an evocative Tahiti landscape.
Its name comes from the word for "tree" in the local language.
According to Artcurial, the last sale in France of a Gauguin from this period was 22 years ago.
"This oil on canvas is a legacy piece that encapsulates the artist's Tahitian themes and obsessions from a period when he was plagued by multiple torments," Artcurial said.
Recent years have seen increasing attention on Gauguin's attitudes to the young women who feature in 

Rare Gauguin from Tahiti period up for auction in Paris

Switzerland has summoned Sri Lanka's ambassador and asked to see the "purported evidence" that Colombo says casts doubt on claims by a Swiss embassy staff member that she was abducted.
Envoy Karunasena Hettiarachchi, who is based in Berlin, met with Switzerland's State Secretary Pascale Baeriswyl in Bern on Monday, a statement said.
The diplomat flap began after a top Sri Lanka police officer sought asylum in Switzerland.
The next day a local staffer at the Swiss embassy in Colombo claimed she was abducted and forced to hand over sensitive information.
According to the Swiss foreign ministry, the woman was "threatened by unidentified men" and forced "to disclose embassy-related information".
On Sunday, Sri Lanka sought to raise doubts about that narrative, claiming it had provided Swiss ambassador Hanspeter Mock with "clear evidence" that the staff member's account did not add up.
But in a statement issued late Monday the Swiss foreign ministry indicated that such proof had not been ..

Swiss summon Sri Lankan envoy over staffer's abduction

"Fleabag" creator and star Phoebe Waller-Bridge has topped RadioTimes.com's annual power list TV 100.
The list celebrates on-screen and behind-the-scenes TV talent who have had an exceptional past year in British television.
BBC's director of content, Charlotte Moore, called Waller-Bridge "a phenomenal force of nature".
"Phoebe has taken the world by storm with her breathtakingly original voice. She's an utterly unique writer and performer whose emotional honesty and mischievous wit constantly surprises and captures the zeitgeist, and leaves the audience only craving more. I can't wait to see what she's done to 007," Moore added.
Waller-Bridge, who has received multiple Emmys for her work on "Fleabag" and "Killing Eve", was roped in earlier this year to join the writers team of the upcoming James Bond movie "No Time To Die".
Second in the TV 100 list was "Line Of Duty" actor Stephen Graham. He was followed by TV personality Rylan Clark-Neal.
The top 10 was dominated by female TV ...

Phoebe Waller-Bridge named 'most powerful person in television'

A face mask can improve breathing in people suffering from the condition sleep apnoea, which is related to snoring, according to a study assessing more than 200 patients.
The researchers, including those from Imperial College in London, said sleep apnoea affected more than a billion adults globally, causing their airways to become too narrow during sleep.
People briefly stop breathing many times throughout the night, triggering loud snoring, and frequent awakening from sleep, and subsequent daytime sleepiness, they added.
The study, published in the journal The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, was conducted at 11 National Health Service (NHS) sleep centres across the UK, including the Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust, and is one of the first to investigate the use of the treatment for mild cases of sleep apnoea.
They investigated the use of a mask -- called a CPAP machine -- that fits over the nose or mouth and gently pushes air into the mouth and throat, keeping the ...

Face mask may help overcome breathing problems during sleep: Study

NASA has found India's ambitious Chandrayaan-2's Vikram lander, which crashed on the surface of the Moon in September, the US space agency said on Tuesday, crediting a Chennai-based mechanical engineer for helping it trace the debris of the lunar mission by painstakingly spending hours comparing before and after images of the landing site.
NASA's confirmation came nearly three months after India's Chandrayaan-2 mission made a hard landing near the uncharted lunar south pole in the wee hours of September 7.
"The Chandrayaan-2 Vikram lander has been found by our NASA Moon mission, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. See the first mosaic of the impact site," NASA said in a tweet sharing before and after images captured by its moon-revolving Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).
On September 7, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) attempted a soft landing of Vikram on the Moon. However, ISRO lost contact with Vikram shortly before the scheduled touchdown.
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance .

NASA finds Chandrayaan-2's Vikram lander on Moon with Indian techie's help

Sri Lanka's new President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has
instructed a committee inquiring the Easter Sunday terror attacks to expedite their probe, identify those responsible for the attacks and bring them before the law even as he slammed his predecessors for failing to prevent the bombings.
A string of suicide attacks, struck churches and luxury hotels frequented by foreigners in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday on April 21, killing 258 people, including Indians and shattering a decade of peace in the island nation since the end of the brutal civil war with the LTTE.
"They were very relaxed on national security. This led to the disintegration of intelligences services. The end result was they were unable to prevent the spread of Islamic extremism," Rajapaksa was quoted as saying by an official release. He made the remarks when he met the members of the presidential panel Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI) appointed by his predecessor Maithripala Sirisena, according to a statement from the .

Lanka Prez Gotabaya slams predecessors; calls speedy probe into Easter Sunday attacks

US President Donald Trump declared Tuesday that his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron's criticism of NATO as "brain dead" was very insulting.
"NATO serves a great purpose," Trump said, at a joint press appearance with alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg ahead of the allies' summit.
"I think that's very insulting," he said of Macron's comment, branding it a "very, very nasty statement essentially to 28 countries." Trump defended Stoltenberg, boasting that
NATO members have massively increased their defence spending thanks to his pressure.
And he warned he could see France "breaking off" from the allies, after Macron in an interview criticised NATO's leadership and strategy.
"Nobody needs NATO more than France," he said. "It's a very dangerous statement for them to make.

Trump says Macron NATO criticism 'very nasty'

The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) said Tuesday it had re-deployed 75 troops to halt a cycle of communal attacks and revenge killings that have left 79 dead.
The Nepalese troops based in the town of Rumbek were flown by helicopter, after heavy rains rendered roads impassable, to Maper 100 kilometres (60 miles) to the north to provide a "protective presence" in the area.
The deployment "follows reports from local authorities that as many as 79 people have been killed and a further 101 injured in a series of communal clashes and revenge attacks between the Gak and Manuer communities," UNMISS said in a statement.
The mission noted that while political violence had largely subsided in South Sudan due to the signing of a peace deal in September 2018 "intercommunal clashes continue to result in the killing and injuring of civilians, cattle raiding and the looting of property."
Cattle raiding, a generations-old phenomenon in South Sudan, has grown increasingly deadly as ...

UN peacekeepers deploy to stop communal violence in SSudan

Teenagers from four big Chinese regions outshone Western contemporaries nations in a keenly watched survey of education capabilities published Tuesday, which also showed no improvement trend in developed countries over two decades.
The PISA survey is carried out every three years by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), this time among its 37 member states and 42 partner countries and economies.
The latest study, which was conducted last year among 600,000 15-year-old students who all took two-hour tests, showed that students in four Chinese regions of Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang -- as well as Singapore -- topped the rankings, ahead of their Western counterparts in reading, mathematics and science.
In reading, which the OECD considers its headline indicator of education potential, the best performing OECD state was the tiny Baltic nation of Estonia, followed by Canada, Finland and Ireland.
Angel Gurria, the OECD's secretary-general, .

China outclasses West in key education survey

The New Zealand cricket team has been bestowed with the Christopher Martin-Jenkins Spirit of Cricket award for its exemplary show of sportsmanship during the epic final of the ICC World Cup at Lord's in July, which it lost under controversial circumstances.
Kane Williamson and his men were robbed off the World Cup title following a controversial overthrow that allowed England to take the final to the super over and eventually claim their maiden crown on boundary count.
The New Zealand team was presented the award, the brainchild of the Marylebone Cricket Club and the British Broadcasting Corporation, during the drawn second Test against England at Hamilton's Seddon Park.
MCC President Kumar Sangakkara commended the Blackcaps, saying: "The New Zealand team are worthy winners of this award. In the heat of battle, they displayed a level of sportsmanship that was fitting for such a fantastic final, and indeed tournament.
"It is a testament to their squad that even after a match that will .

New Zealand win MCC's Spirit of Cricket award

The founder of Huawei says the Chinese tech giant is moving its US research center to Canada due to American sanctions on the company.
In an interview with Toronto's Global and Mail newspaper, Ren Zhengfei said the move was necessary because Huawei would be blocked from interacting with U.S. employees.
Huawei Technologies Ltd. is the No 2 global smartphone brand and the biggest maker of network gear for phone carriers. U.S. authorities say the company is a security risk, which Huawei denies, and announced curbs in May on its access to American components and technology.
The Trump administration announced a 90-day reprieve on some sales to Huawei. The government said that would apply to components and technology needed to support wireless networks in rural areas.
Ren gave no details but Huawei confirmed in June it had cut 600 jobs at its Silicon Valley research center in Santa Clara, California, leaving about 250 employees. A Huawei spokesman said the company had no further ...

Huawei moving US research center to Canada

Pakistan's Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry, a known motormouth, on Tuesday asked the international organisations to take notice of what he called India's "irresponsible" space missions.
"India is becoming a huge source of Space debris, irresponsible space missions of India are dangrous for whole eco system, needs serious notice by Int organizations (sic)," Chaudhry, considered to be a close aide of Prime Minister Imran Khan, tweeted.
His tweet came hours after NASA said its Moon-orbiting spacecraft has found the debris of Chandrayaan 2's lander Vikram on the surface of the Moon, nearly three months after India's ambitious mission made a hard landing near the uncharted lunar south pole.
Pakistan's national space agency Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) was set up in 1961. The agency launched its first communication satellite 50 years later with help from China.
Pakistan also plans to send its first astronaut into space by 2022.

Pak's science minister calls India's space missions 'irresponsible'

Typhoon Kammuri killed at least two people in the Philippines on Tuesday as it tore roofs of houses and forced the international airport in Manila to shut down.
The storm roared ashore late Monday and passed south of Manila -- home to 13 million people -- and thousands of athletes at the regional Southeast Asian Games.
As the typhoon was exiting the Philippines it hit one last major landmass, the central island of Mindoro, where one man was crushed by a falling tree and another killed by a flying piece of lumber, police said.
Ahead of the storm's arrival a 33-year-old man was electrocuted on Monday while securing a roof against the winds, which by late Tuesday weakened to a maximum of 140 kilometres (85 miles) per hour.
Authorities were still assessing the storm's impact, but a small local airport was seriously damaged, many power poles toppled and homes were battered.
"A lot of trees fell... There were a lot of roofs flying during the typhoon too," said Junie Castillo, a disaster ...

Typhoon Kammuri kills two in Philippines, closes Manila airport

The stench of raw meat hung in the air and pools of blood dotted the muddy ground on Tuesday as what is thought to be the world's biggest animal sacrifice swung into action in a remote area of Nepal.
Efforts from activists and officials were expected to cut the death toll from the 200,000 butchered at the last Gadhimai Festival five years ago, but thousands of creatures were still set to be killed over the two days.
The event in honour of a Hindu goddess kicked off in the early hours amid tight security, with the ceremonial slaughter of a goat, rat, chicken, pig and a pigeon. A local shaman then offered blood from five points of his body.
Some 200 butchers with sharpened swords and knives then walked into a walled arena bigger than a football field that held several thousand buffalo as excited pilgrims climbed trees and walls to catch a glimpse.
"We had tried not to support it but people have faith in the tradition and have come here with their offerings," Birendra Prasad Yadav from ..

Nepal's mass animal slaughter begins despite outcry

US President Donald Trump said Tuesday he would try to stay out of the British election campaign but nonetheless meet Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Trump is in London for the summit of the NATO alliance but was not expected to hold a one-to-one with Johnson, ten days before the vote.
But, asked by reporters, the US president said: "I will be meeting with him yes.

Trump says to meet Britain's Johnson during NATO talks

Fabio Cannavaro said taking Guangzhou Evergrande to the Chinese Super League title was "a miracle" and gave the strongest indication yet that he expects to keep his job.
The 46-year-old Italian World Cup winner was temporarily moved aside as coach in October but returned to lead China's most successful club to the championship on Sunday.
It was the former Juventus and Real Madrid defender's first major honour as a coach and a personal triumph after a turbulent few weeks during which he appeared to be on the brink of the sack.
"I know that many names have been mentioned as a replacement for me, including (Jose) Mourinho, (Zinedine) Zidane and (former Guangzhou coach) Scolari," Cannavaro told the Guangzhou Daily in a report published Tuesday, referring to recent rumours.
"For a team of Evergrande's level, fans hope to have the top coaches and the coach will definitely face various pressures.
"I'm definitely not a perfect coach and it's impossible to make everyone satisfied."
Guangzhou ..

Cannavaro expects to stay at Guangzhou after 'miracle' title

The Indian junior women's hockey team will look to begin its campaign on a positive note against New Zealand in its opening match of the Three-Nation tournament here on Wednesday.
Besides India and New Zealand, the tournament will also feature hosts Australia.
For the Baljeet Saini-coached Indian team, the tournament is an opportunity to gain the much-needed exposure of playing two top teams of the world.
The team is scheduled to take part in the AHF Women's Junior Asia Cup next year to be held in Japan, and Saini is expecting the side to make the most out of the
tournament.
"Our target in the next year is to perform well at the AHF Women's Junior Asia Cup which will take place in 2020. This group of players has been training with us for a fair amount of time now, and to have the opportunity of playing in Australia against two top teams is a great way to prepare for the upcoming year," said Saini.
"We are also hoping that these four matches will give us a good idea of how the team is .

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