The United States on Tuesday threw its support behind NATO ally Turkey over its reprisals against the Syrian army following regime shelling.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the mortar attack on Turkish posts in Syria's Idlib province "a grave escalation" and said US officials "fully support Turkey's justified self-defense actions in response.

US 'fully' backs Turkey's response to Syrian fire

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Poland's president on Tuesday signed into law controversial legislation aimed at disciplining judges who question government judicial reforms that the European Union says are out of step with the rule of law.
Poland's human rights commissioner and opposition politicians immediately criticised the move as undermining judicial independence, calling it a first step in the direction of a "Polexit" out of the EU's legal order.
Spokesman Blazej Spychalski told Poland's PAP news agency that President Andrzej Duda had signed the amendment that critics, including Poland's Supreme Court Justice Malgorzata Gersdorf, have dubbed a "muzzle law".
The amendment allows the disciplining of judges "whose public activities are incompatible with the principles of the independence of the courts and the independence of judges."
Drafted by the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party and pushed through parliament by its lawmakers, the measure has been widely criticised by the European Commission and top ...

Polish president signs 'muzzle law' to discipline judges

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called Tuesday for an end to fighting between Turkey and Syria in Syria's opposition-held province of Idlib on Tuesday.
Guterres told reporters it was an "extremely worrying" escalation in the conflict that the Turkish army and the Syrian army were now "bombing each other" in the restive northwest region.
"My strong appeal is for a cessation of hostilities," he said.
"We don't believe there is a military solution for the conflict in Syria. We have said time and time again that the solution is political," Guterres added.
On Monday, the Turkish and Syrian armies engaged in their deadliest clashes since Ankara sent troops to Syria in 2016.
Regime shelling of Turkish positions in Idlib killed at least five Turkish soldiers and three civilians, Ankara said.
Retaliatory fire from Turkey killed at least 13 Syrian government troops, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The incident further tested the uneasy coordination between ...

UN chief calls for end to fighting between Turkey and Syria in Idlib

The shareholders of US jewellery company Tiffany gave the green light Tuesday for its acquisition by luxury behemoth LVHM for a sum of USD 16.2 billion, setting the French firm up to become a power player in fine gems at a time that demand is soaring.
The deal comes after a long wooing campaign by LVMH, already the world's top luxury firm overall, for one of the world's most famous jewellery houses, known for wedding rings and diamonds.
In a statement, LVMH announced that "stockholders of Tiffany & Co have voted overwhelmingly to approve the previously announced merger agreement relating to the proposed acquisition of Tiffany by LVMH."
According to an agreement announced in November, LVMH will pay USD 135 per share in cash,"in a transaction with an equity value of approximately 14.7 billion euros or USD 16.2 billion," it said.
"This approval is a significant milestone as we move closer to completing our acquisition of Tiffany, an iconic company with a rich heritage and unique ...

Tiffany shareholders approve USD 16.2-bn bid by France's LVMH

Armed bandits have killed 11 people in separate attacks in northern Nigeria, a community leader and residents said Tuesday.
In the first incident on Monday, six vigilantes were killed when gunmen invaded Kakangi village in the restive Birnin Gwari area of Kaduna state.
The vigilantes had intercepted the gunmen with a large herd of cattle they stole from nearby Niger state, the sources said.
"The cattle rustlers killed six vigilantes in a gunfight to reclaim the stolen herd," Abdullahi Bature, a spokesman for the traditional chief of Birnin Gwari, told AFP.
"The vigilantes mobilised and engaged the cattle rustlers in a fight to reclaim the cows," but were over-powered, said resident Abdullahi Sara.
Separately on the same day, around 100 motorcycle-riding gunmen stormed several villages in neighbouring Zamfara state, shooting and looting homes before setting them ablaze, said witnesses.
The bandits attacked Yar Talata village where they killed four residents and moved to neighbouring ...

Bandits kill 11 villagers in northern Nigeria

The dramatic measures taken by China to rein in the deadly new coronavirus outbreak have prevented significant spread abroad, providing a "window of opportunity" to halt transmission, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.
But the UN health agency's chief also called for greater solidarity, accusing some governments of wealthy countries of being "well behind" in sharing data on virus cases.
"While 99 percent of cases are in China, in the rest of the world we only have 176 cases," Tedros said in a technical briefing to the WHO's Executive Board in Geneva.
"That doesn't mean that it won't get worse. But for sure we have a window of opportunity to act... Let's not miss this window of opportunity," he said.
Tedros said the WHO had received complete case report forms for only 38 percent of the cases outside China.
"Some high-income countries are well behind in sharing this vital data with WHO. I don't think it's because they lack capacity," he said.
"Without better data, it's very ...

World has 'window of opportunity' to halt virus spread: WHO chief

A man who pretended being a doctor and then attempted to murder his wife and her family members over fears of his secret being exposed has been sentenced to 28 years' imprisonment by a UK court.
Satya Thakor, a failed medical student, had faked his medical qualifications as he pretended to be busy with late night shifts for seven years, Reading Crown Court was told as the 35-year-old was sentenced on Monday.
The prosecution told the court that in May last year he attempted to suffocate his mother-in-law Gita Laxman before arming himself with a knife to attack wife Nisha and brother-in-law Primal and sister-in-law Rishika.
Police found Thakor in the bath of the home in Wraysbury, Berkshire, where he had stabbed himself a number of times and was shouting about demons.
"You chose an extreme act of violence to get out of the difficulty that you were in. You could have stopped it as the madness that it was and as the idiotic decision that it was, but you chose not to," Judge Paul Dugdale ..

Fake Indian-origin doctor jailed for knife attack on family in UK

The top US commander for the Middle East slipped quietly into Iraq Tuesday, as the Trump administration works to salvage relations with Iraqi leaders and shut down the government's push for an American troop withdrawal.
Marine General Frank McKenzie became the most senior U.S. military official to visit since an American drone strike in Baghdad killed a top Iranian general, enraging the Iraqis.
McKenzie met with Iraq leaders in Baghdad and then went to see American troops at al Asad Air base, which was bombed by Iran last month in retaliation for the drone attack.
His visit comes amid heightened anti-American sentiment that has fuelled violent protests, rocket attacks on the embassy and a vote by the Iraqi parliament pushing for withdrawal of US troops from the country.
And it raises questions about whether the appearance of a high-profile US military commander could spur compromise, or simply inflame tensions and scuttle ongoing negotiations to put Patriot missile batteries in Iraq ..

US general slips into Iraq for talks to salvage relations

A German appeals court on Tuesday rejected a Jewish man's bid to force the removal of a 700-year-old anti-Semitic statue from a church where Martin Luther once preached.
The "Judensau," or "Jew pig," sculpture on the Town Church in Wittenberg is one of more than 20 such relics from the Middle Ages that still adorn churches across Germany and elsewhere in Europe.
Located about four meters (13 feet) above ground, it depicts people identifiable as Jews suckling on the teats of a sow, while a rabbi lifts the animal's tail.
In 1570, after the Protestant Reformation, an inscription referring to an anti-Jewish tract by Luther was added.
In 1988, a memorial was set into the ground underneath it, referring to the persecution of Jews and the killing of 6 million people in the Nazi Holocaust.
In addition, a sign gives information on the sculpture in German and English.
Plaintiff Michael Duellmann has argued that the sculpture is a defamation of and insult to the Jewish people and that it has a ..

German appeal court rejects bid to remove anti-Semitic relic

An international human rights commission said Tuesday that the government of President Nicols Maduro has blocked its members from boarding a plane for Venezuela, where they planned to investigate alleged abuses.
The rejection had been expected in large part because the group from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights had been invited by the country's congress.
The legislature and Maduro mutually consider one another illegitimate.
The three members of the group posted a picture on Twitter holding their boarding passes at the airport gate in Panama.
They said Maduro's government told the Panama-based Copa Airlines not to allow them on the flight to Caracas.
We will press ahead with our objective, meeting victims on the Colombian border with Venezuela, said Paulo Abrao, executive secretary of the commission.
Venezuela's opposition-led National Assembly had invited the group, which is a branch of the Organization of American States, the Washington-based body representing more than 

Venezuela blocks entry of human rights investigators

The chair of an independent inquiry into how a prominent British breast surgeon was able to perform unnecessary operations for years concluded Tuesday that more than 1,000 patients might have been affected by a dysfunctional'' system that did not keep patients safe.
In 2017, a jury found rogue surgeon Ian Paterson guilty of 17 counts of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and three counts of unlawful wounding.
Prosecutors say the doctor lied to patients or exaggerated their risk of cancer to persuade them to have surgery.
But Paterson's patients demanded a more thorough reckoning to prevent such situations from ever happening again.
The examination of Paterson's actions concluded that patients were let down for many years both by Britain's National Health Service and by private medical insurance and workers.
The Rev. Graham James, the inquiry's chair, said opportunities to stop the doctor's behavior were repeatedly missed by a system characterized by willful ...

UK inquiry: Rogue breast surgeon hurt over 1,000 patients

The first lady of Lesotho is set to be charged with murder in connection with the 2017 killing of the prime minister's former wife, police said Tuesday.
Maesaiah Thabane, who fled the country on January 10 to escape arrest, returned to the small southern African kingdom Tuesday afternoon and handed herself to police in the capital, Maseru. Police said she had been hiding in neighboring South Africa.
Deputy Commissioner of Police Mokete Paseka said Thabane would spend the night in custody and only be taken to court once the director of public prosecutions has prepared the charge sheet.
An arrest warrant for the first lady was issued the day she fled the country after she refused to report to police for questioning in connection with the murder of Prime Minister Thomas Thabane's former wife, Lipolelo.
The killing occurred two days before the prime minister's inauguration for a second term, and two years after a court ruled that Lipolelo was the lawful first lady and entitled to ...

Police say Lesotho's first lady to be charged with murder

Israel's Holocaust memorial centre has apologised over "errors" in films screened during a high-profile ceremony last month that distorted events related to the Soviet Union and Poland during World War II.
The Yad Vashem centre in Jerusalem said in a blog posted Monday that some of the material shown at the January 23 event, attended by more than 40 heads of state and government, included "inaccuracies that resulted in partial and unbalanced presentation of historical facts."
The ceremony marking 75 years since the Soviet Red Army liberated the Nazi death camp Auschwitz was co-organised by the World Holocaust Forum Foundation, led by Russian billionaire and Kremlin ally Moshe Kantor.
The films shown at the event were produced by Kantor's foundation "in cooperation" with Yad Vashem, a spokesman for the institution told AFP on Tuesday.
The films made no mention of "the division of Poland between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939 or to the conquest of Western Europe in 1940," Yad 

Israel Holocaust memorial admits historical 'errors' at Auschwitz event

The United States is working with a pharmaceutical company to develop a treatment for the 2019 Novel Coronavirus, using a class of drug that has boosted survival rates among Ebola patients, officials said Tuesday.
The partnership between the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Regeneron will develop monoclonal antibodies to fight the infection, a different line of treatment to the antiretrovirals and flu drugs that have also emerged as possible defenses against the disease.
More than 400 people have died as a result of the virus since it it first emerged in a Chinese market at the end of last year.
"Emerging infectious diseases can present serious threats to our nation's health security," said Rick Bright, an official at the HHS.
"Working as public-private partners like we have with Regeneron since 2014, we can move rapidly to respond to new global health threats." Monoclonal antibodies are lab-produced copies of a single type of antibody and are a form of ...

US working with pharmaceutical firm on new type of coronavirus treatment

Suspected Boko Haram jihadists attacked a village in northern Cameroon early Tuesday, torching homes and killing two civilians just days before legislative and municipal elections, security sources said.
"Boko Haram made an incursion a little before 2:00am in Mozogo village," in the Extreme-Nord province "killing two people," a police officer told AFP.
They torched about 20 homes and two motorbikes and stole another five motorcycles, the officer said.
An army officer confirmed the incident.
Security has been tightened in Cameroon ahead of Sunday's elections. Anglophone separatists are fighting government troops in western Cameroon while the north of the country has come under attack from Boko Haram.
Based in neighbouring Nigeria, Boko Haram has stepped up attacks from bases hidden in the vast Lake Chad area, where the borders of Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria converge.
Cameroon says the group has carried out nearly 13,000 attacks on its territory since 2014, with the loss of ...

Two killed, 20 homes torched in Cameroon Boko Haram attack

European governments could consider a US-style ban on foreign visitors who have recently been to China, in a bid to impede the spread of the deadly coronavirus outbreak, the health ministers of France and Germany said on Tuesday.
"Indeed, there is the question of possible travel restrictions or at least increased examination (of travellers) at the border," Germany's Jens Spahn said at a meeting in Paris with his French counterpart Agnes Buzyn.
He was responding to a question about whether Europe would consider a ban similar to that imposed by the United States, which China has accused of spreading "panic".
"It makes no sense that a single country takes measures," on a continent with border-free travel between most nations, said Spahn.
The new coronavirus has killed more than 400 people and infected a further 20,000 in China since emerging in December and has now spread to more than 20 other countries.
Buzyn agreed that travel restriction "is one of the questions for European ...

Europe could consider US-style coronavirus travel ban: ministers

Investigators from the International Criminal Court have begun collecting evidence for a case involving alleged crimes against humanity by Myanmar against Rohingya Muslims causing them to flee to neighboring Bangladesh, a court official said on Tuesday.
Phakiso Mochochoko, director of the Jurisdiction, Complementary and Cooperation Division of the ICC Office of the Prosecutor, said a team of investigators is visiting Rohingya refugee camps to collect evidence. He said justice will be delivered whether Myanmar cooperates or not.
Mochochoko told reporters in Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, that The Hague-based court will pursue the case even though Myanmar is not a party to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established it, and urged the Buddhist-majority nation to cooperate. Myanmar has denied committing crimes against humanity or genocide.
He said the court has a mandate to proceed with the case because Bangladesh is a party to the statute and the Rohingya crossed the border into that ...

International court gathering evidence in Rohingya case

Turkey's president said on Tuesday his country won't allow Syrian forces to gain additional territory in a northern Syrian province, Turkish media reported, a day after clashes between Turkish and Syrian forces killed soldiers on both sides.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan's comments came as Syrian forces reached the western gate of the rebel stronghold of Saraqeb in Idlib province in the north, while the UN announced that more than half a million people have fled their homes since December 1, because of the offensive.
"At the moment, Syria is trying to gain territory by forcing the innocent and poor people toward our border," private NTV television quoted Erdogan as telling a group of journalists late Monday.
"We won't give Syria the opportunity to gain territory."
Eight Turkish citizens were killed in an exchange of shelling with Syrian government forces in Idlib on Monday.
The assault on the Turkish troops came amid a Syrian government offensive that has been advancing since December into the 

President: Turkey won't allow more ground to Syria in Idlib

Britain on Tuesday urged all of its citizens in China to leave because of the virus outbreak, while Belgium became the latest nation to announce a confirmed case.
The UK Foreign Office said in an updated travel advisory that commercial airline options remain available throughout China, with the exception of Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak that includes the hard-hit city of Wuhan.
The British government said it will still try to evacuate British citizens from Hubei, where some 50 million people are under travel restrictions.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab says the UK government now advises citizens "in China to leave the country if they can, to minimise their risk of exposure to the virus.''
France also issued an advisory, warning against any non-essential travel to China and suggesting that French citizens in China return home.
More than 20,400 people have been infected with the virus in China and 425 have died.
Two other people have died in the Philippines and ..

UK urges citizens in China to leave; Belgium sees first case

Alice Mayhew, the celebrated and influential editor of political and historical works whose authors ranged from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to Taylor Branch and Doris Kearns Goodwin, died on Tuesday at age 87.
Simon & Schuster, which she joined in 1971, says that she died peacefully at her home in Manhattan.
Mayhew edited some of the most notable nonfiction books of the past half century, including Woodward and Bernstein's landmark Watergate best-seller All the President's Men," Branch's acclaimed civil rights trilogy and Goodwin's Pulitzer Prize winning No Ordinary Time."
Alice's loyalty to her authors was so absolute that despite her extraordinary record in publishing and the many offers she received over the years, she repeatedly refused to participate in any form of publicity or recognition for her achievements, never wavering in her conviction that the spotlight should always remain entirely focused on her authors," Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy wrote Tuesday.

Celebrated book editor Alice Mayhew dies at age 87

A 1944 painting by German artist George Grosz that depicts Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as the Bible's fratricidal Cain went on display at the German Historical Museum in Berlin on Tuesday as part of a new permanent exhibition.
Grosz was one of the most important artists focused on political themes during the Weimar Republic in Germany, a period between the end of World War I and the Nazis' rise to power in 1933.
Grosz immigrated that year to the United States. The Nazis deemed many of his creations "degenerate art" and destroyed them.
The 1944 painting "Cain or Hitler in Hell" depicts a broken Hitler sitting among skeletons as war rages behind him.
The biblical Cain murders his brother, Abel, and God condemns him to a life of wandering.
The artwork helps illustrate "how Grosz further developed his critical form after emigration," said Markus Hilgert, a senior German cultural official.
Grosz himself said the painting shows "Hitler as a fascist monster, or as an apocalyptic beast."
The ...

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