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 ...

Painting showing Hitler as Cain displayed in Berlin museum

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European and American nationalists attending a conference Tuesday in Rome cheered Brexit, warned of left-wing "totalitarianism" and waxed nostalgic about St. John Paul II's papacy and the glorious revolution that brought down communism.
The second annual National Conservatism Conference had God, Honor, Country as its theme.
Rising right-wing stars from Italy and France were keynote speakers, and conservative Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban closed out the meeting.
Organiser Christopher DeMuth drew applause when he blasted the World Economic Forum, the annual gathering of political and business elites in Davos, Switzerland.
The threat of authoritarianism doesn't come from the right, DeMuth said, but the globalist media, political and university establishment of the left.
We are called primitives, xenophobes, paranoids, racists. We are even called populists, he said to laughter. He said today's conservative nationalists are the direct descendants and rightful heirs of the glorious .

Nationalists in Rome cheer Brexit, honour Pope John Paul II

Britain's Prince William and wife Kate Middleton, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, visited the Tata Steel plant in the UK on Tuesday and interacted with steelworkers.
The royal couple were taken around the Port Talbot plant in South Wales, the UK's largest steelworks, during a visit to the region.
The Tata Group company said they were shown around the integrated steelmaking site in order to learn more about the importance of Tata Steel's operations to the UK economy and the important role the company plays in the local community.
William and Kate visited the training workshops where they met with apprentices, future leaders as well as members of community groups supported by Tata Steel.
The royals were also shown the Hot Strip Mill at the Port Talbot site to see how Tata Steel transforms red hot steel slabs into steel strip before it is further processed for use by customers around the globe.
"The site and its people are truly at the heart of the UK's manufacturing industry, with ...

Prince William, Kate tour Tata Steel site in UK

The Russian Orthodox Church has proposed a stop to the practice of having priests bless weapons of mass destruction, though sprinkling holy water on planes and ships is still deemed appropriate.
The Church on Monday published a draft document outlining its role in blessing Orthodox Christians who "protect the Fatherland" and "carry out their military duty", inviting internet users to discuss the proposal online.
Russians often ask priests to bless anything from new cars and flats to Soyuz spaceships in the belief that the gesture bestows divine protection.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, priests have also begun blessing troops, planes and ships, and all sorts of weapons, from Kalashnikov rifles to nuclear-capable Iskander ballistic missiles.
But the document proposed that "blessing any type of weapons the usage of which can inflict an indefinite number of deaths, including weapons with indiscriminate effects or weapons of mass destruction... be removed from pastoral practice."
At .

Russian Church mulls stop to practice of blessing nukes

France's highest constitutional body began examining a complaint Tuesday from a Frenchman seeking a law change to allow a pardon for his father who was executed in 1957 for killing a policeman in an armed robbery.
The law in France, which abolished capital punishment in 1981, prohibits the "legal rehabilitation" of convicts who were put to death.
Gerard Fesch approached the Constitutional Council for a change in law to allow for a posthumous reprieve for his father Jacques Fesch, who became a devout Christian in jail.
Making the request all the more extraordinary is that Gerard Fesch never knew his father, having been given up by his mother shortly after he was born and growing up in foster care.
Jacques Fesch was sentenced to death on April 6, 1957 and executed on October 1 of that year, aged 27.
During a half year on death row, he turned to religion in a dramatic repentance that senior French Catholics today deem worthy of beatification.
Patrice Spinosi, one of Gerard Fesch's ...

Frenchman seeks pardon for father, guillotined in 1957

A passenger jet taking winter-weary Canadians to Jamaica for a sunny holiday was forced to turn back after a passenger falsely claimed to have the coronavirus, the airline said Tuesday.
The Westjet flight to Montego Bay was diverted to Toronto on Monday "due to an unruly guest," spokeswoman Morgan Bell told AFP.
"Out of an abundance of caution, our crew followed all protocols for infectious disease on board, including sequestering an individual who made an unfounded claim regarding coronavirus," she said.
According to reports, the man stood almost halfway through the four-hour flight carrying 243 passengers and, while taking selfies, declared that he had contracted the virus that has infected more than 20,400 and killed 425.
Flight attendants gave him a mask and gloves and ordered him to the back of the plane.
"I guess this guy thought it was a funny joke but it's just really weird. We were all very frustrated, to just displace 240 people ... it's just so selfish," passenger ...

Coronavirus prank forces Jamaica-bound flight back to Canada

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg claimed victory on Tuesday in the Iowa caucuses although party officials have yet to release any official results from a vote plagued by technical problems.
"We were able to demonstrate both the winning message and the winning organization," the 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said in an interview with MSNBC.
Buttigieg, who is battling former vice president Joe Biden for the moderate wing of the party, said that based on an internal tally put together by his staff it was a "clear victory for this campaign."
"This is really the first proof point for how we're building the campaign that is ultimately going to go on to defeat (Donald) Trump" in November's presidential election, he said.
According to Buttigieg's website, citing results from 1,200 of the nearly 1,700 precincts in the midwestern state, he earned the support of 24.7 percent of the 152,000 voters who took part in Monday's caucuses, the kickoff of the ...

Buttigieg claims victory in Iowa but results still pending

A Russian firm is suing France's far-right National Rally (RN) party, led by Marine Le Pen, for failing to repay a multi-million euro loan, court documents revealed.
Court documents filed at the website of Moscow's Court of Arbitration show that aviation parts company Aviazapchast is suing the RN for 639.8 million rubles (USD 10.1 million) loaned to the party.
The party, which has struggled financially for several years, originally took out the loan with Russia's First Czech-Russian Bank in 2014.
The debt-recovery action was filed with the Russian court in December. Le Pen's party was notified in a letter dated December 25, and the first hearing is set for June The RN should have made a single payment of nine million euros in 2019, after interest payments.
The party's treasurer, Wallerand de Saint Just, told AFP the party had "good relations" with its creditor Aviazapchast.
Of the loan, he said: "We are in the process of paying it back." When news first broke of the 2014 loan, it ...

Russian firm sues French far-right party for unpaid debt

Dozens of Bangladeshi drug kingpins surrendered in a meth hub along the border with Myanmar, authorities said Tuesday, as fears grow over a Philippines-style violent crackdown against traffickers.
Addiction to "yaba", a cheap and addictive methamphetamine pill, has soared in the impoverished South Asian nation in recent years, experts say -- even in remote rural villages.
Authorities say the border towns have become hotspots for trafficking as Rohingya refugees -- 740,000 of whom fled Myanmar in 2017 following a military crackdown -- turn to drug smuggling to try and make ends meet.
Some 21 smugglers from Teknaf -- a major transit point used by dealers to bring in tens of millions of yaba pills from Myanmar's border states -- surrendered late Monday, police said.
"I welcome those who surrender today because we will not let any drug dealers sleep in peace," regional police chief Golam Faruk told the surrender ceremony Monday.  The smugglers also surrendered thousands of yaba pills as ..

Bangladesh drug kingpins surrender as deadly crackdown continues

The Danish investigative authorities have announced the confiscation of a multi-million-pound property owned by a Dubai-based Indian-origin tycoon in central London over alleged tax fraud.
Sanjay Shah denies any wrongdoing and his spokesperson described Monday's announcement as odd because Shah's assets had been frozen by the Danish tax authority over a year ago.
"Sanjay continues to protest his innocence and repeats that he received two separate legal opinions that the cum-ex trades were legal," said Shah's spokesperson Jack Irvine.
"Sanjay's assets were frozen over a year ago by the Danish tax authority, SKAT. It seems odd that Soik [state prosecutors] now make another announcement. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, he said.
While the Danish authorities have not identified Shah by name, Denmark's State Prosecutor for Serious Economic and International Crime said the announcement this week followed the UK authorities confirming that the seizure had been ...

Denmark confiscates Indian-origin tycoon's London property

For companies bracing for losses from China's viral outbreak, the damage has so far been delayed, thanks to a stroke of timing: The outbreak hit just when Chinese factories and many businesses were closed anyway to let workers travel home for the week-long Lunar New Year holiday .
But the respite won't last.
If much of industrial China remains on lockdown for the next few weeks, a very real possibility, Western retailers, auto companies and manufacturers that depend on Chinese imports will start to run out of the goods they depend on.
In order to meet deadlines for summer goods, retail experts say that Chinese factories would need to start ramping up production by March 15. If Chinese factories were instead to remain idle through May 1, it would likely cripple retailers' crucial back-to-school and fall seasons.
There's complete uncertainty,'' said Steve Pasierb, CEO of the Toy Industry Association.
This could be huge if it goes on for months.'' Wuhan, the Chinese city where the ...

Clock is ticking for companies that depend on China imports

French international striker Ousmane Dembele has suffered a badly torn hamstring, his club Barcelona announced on Tuesday.
"Tests carried out on Tuesday on Ousmane Dembele have shown that the player has a complete proximal hamstring tear in his right thigh," the club announced.
"In the next few hours a decision will be made on the treatment to be followed for his recovery."
The 22-year-old has struggled with hamstring problems. He had only just returned from an injury to the right thigh he suffered in November before suffering a fresh problem in training on Monday.
The striker joined Barcelona from Borussia Dortmund in August 2017 in a deal worth up to 147 million euros. He has played 21 times for France and was part of the squad that won the World Cup in 2020.
The latest injury is similar to one he suffered in 2017, in his first league start for Barcelona. Then he was out for five months with a ruptured tendon in his left thigh.
Barcelona play Naples in the Champions League round of .

Barcelona's Dembele out with badly torn hamstring

Joe Denly hit a career-best 87 to lead an England fightback in the first one-day international against South Africa at Newlands on Tuesday.
England made 258 for eight after being sent in on a slow pitch. They were floundering at 131 for six before Denly and Chris Woakes (40) came together in a seventh-wicket stand of 91.
Left-arm wrist spinner Tabraiz Shamsi did the major damage for South Africa, taking three for 38.
England made a good start with Jason Roy and Jonny Bairstow putting on 51 for the first wicket before both were dismissed in successive overs.
Joe Root and captain Eoin Morgan seemed to be stabilising the innings before both were out in the space of three balls -- Root to a direct-hit run-out by Rassie van der Dussen and Morgan to a catch at slip off Shamsi.
Denly saw two more wickets fall before he was joined by Woakes, playing in his 100th one-day international.
Denly made his runs off 103 balls before he was caught in the deep in the last over.  Both teams were ...

Denly leads England fightback in first ODI

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that a nationwide vote on constitutional changes he proposed wouldn't be used to extend his current term in office, but remained tight-lipped about his future political plans.
Kremlin critics have seen Putin's amendments as part of his efforts to stay at the helm after his current presidential term expires in 2024. The proposed changes, however, don't make it clear exactly how he could do that.
Asked during a meeting with students and teachers if the vote could be used to directly extend his term in office, Putin said it's not what he wants.
I didn't propose that to extend my authority, Putin said. The election of the head of state must be held on a competitive basis.
Observers have speculated that once his term expires Putin could use the amendments to continue calling the shots as head of the State Council or prime minister.
The former position, however, is yet to be defined and the latter is clearly subordinate to the presidency, making 

Putin remains coy on his future political plans

China's coronavirus outbreak showed no signs of abating as the death toll rose sharply to 426 with more than 20,000 confirmed cases, amid a shocking report of Chinese officials silencing a doctor in Wuhan who first reported the presence of the deadly virus in December last year.
China, which has intensified its efforts to contain the spread of the virus, on Monday opened a 1,000-bed makeshift hospital built in record nine days in Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak.
Another 1,300 bed hospital is set to be ready on Wednesday. Both will be run by hundreds of military medical personnel.
Authorities in Wuhan on Tuesday said they would build eight more mobile cabin hospitals to treat the patients, China Daily reported.
The total number of cases soared to 20,522 raising concerns over its increasing virulence, China's National Health Commission reported on Tuesday.
Monday saw 64 deaths with 3,235 new confirmed cases mostly in Hubei province, from where India evacuated 647 of its citizens ...

China coronavirus outbreak turns more virulent as death toll soars to 426

Pakistan players will now be able to take part in a maximum of three ICC approved leagues in a year excluding the Pakistan Super League, Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) said on Tuesday.
PCB revised its policy for awarding NOC's to centrally contracted players for foreign T20 leagues during a meeting of the Board of Governors held in Peshawar.
In another major decision, the BOG members gave their approval to PCB chief Ehsan Mani to negotiate with the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) over the hosting of the Asia Cup in September.
According to a PCB release, the BoG approved the No Objective Certificate (NOC) guidelines for cricketers.
The policy allows centrally contracted players to seek a clearance for up to a maximum of three ICC-approved foreign leagues, excluding the Pakistan Super League, as long as they don't coincide with the PCB-organised events and player workload and fitness regime is properly managed.
The CEO, however, shall have a final approval right.
The release said that further 

Pak players can participate in three ICC approved leagues in a year: PCB

As doctors scramble to contain the fast-spreading coronavirus, a potent brew of anti-retroviral and flu drugs has emerged as a possible defence against the disease that has killed hundreds.
But the science is inconclusive on whether they are actually effective, and experts say a specific  treatment could take years to develop.  Here is what we know -- and don't know -- about the drugs deployed against the SARS-like virus.
Patients diagnosed with the common flu are often prescribed an antiviral drug widely known as Tamiflu.
But seasonal flu is "very different from the Chinese coronavirus", said Sylvie van der Werf at the Paris-based Pasteur Institute.
So far the new coronavirus has infected tens of thousands worldwide and killed more than 420 people, mostly in mainland China.
Two weeks ago Chinese doctors confirmed they had been giving anti-HIV drugs to coronavirus patients in Beijing, based on a 2004 study published after the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that ..

HIV drugs touted as weapon in war on coronavirus

The Taliban lashed out at Washington on social media Tuesday, accusing the US of holding up negotiations over a potential withdrawal deal that would see the Americans end their 18-year war in Afghanistan.
Washington and the Taliban are still wrangling over a possible deal that would see US troops begin to leave Afghanistan in return for security guarantees.
However, there appears to have been little progress in reaching a deal in recent weeks, prompting the insurgents to saddle blame on the White House and what they say are a growing list of demands by the Americans to pave the way for a deal.
The Taliban "has the intention & capacity for a resolution," said spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid in a tweet.
"Negotiation process has been harmed by Trump's tweet, numerous US demands & quarrel b/w US & Kabul officials. @SecPompeo should refrain from blame-shifting. Our stance in principled & concerted - unlike them," he added.
The Taliban's remarks came a day after Secretary of ...

Taliban slam US for stalling in talks

Two-thirds of the victims of the virulent coronavirus were men and 80 per cent of the dead were over 60 years old, a Chinese health official said on Tuesday.
The death toll in the coronavirus outbreak rose to 426 on Monday while the total number of cases increased to 20,522, according to Chinese health officials.
The majority of people who died were men accounting for about two-thirds and women for one-third, Jiao Yahui, an official of China's National Health Commission, told the media here.
More than 80 per cent of the dead were over 60 years old, and over 75 per cent had at least one underlying disease such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and tumours, Jiao said.
Elderly people with underlying diseases infected with any kind of pneumonia would be at a higher risk, she said.
With more hospitals being made available, she said, "we believe the fatality rate of Wuhan will drop gradually."
Hubei and its provincial capital Wuhan became the epicentre of the province with vast majority .

Two-thirds of coronavirus victims are men: Chinese health official

Yashasvi Jaiswal batted like a man among boys while Kartik Tyagi reminded Pakistan of Waqar Younis' toe-crushing yorkers as defending champions India walloped their arch-rivals by 10 wickets to enter their seventh ICC U-19 World Cup final here on Tuesday.
The gulf in class between the two sides was evident as Indian bowlers collectively choked Pakistan to a paltry 172 in 43.1 overs. Left-handed opener Jaiswal then showed his class with an unbeaten knock of 105 off 113 balls, with an equally graceful Divyansh Saxena (59 not out off 99 balls) supporting him in an easy chase completed in only 35.2 overs.
"It's a dream come true for me. To be able to do this for my country is a great feeling. To score a hundred against Pakistan in a World Cup semi-final is something I can't put into words," Jaiswal, who hit eight fours and four sixes, said after winning the 'Player of the Match' award.
India thus maintained their supremacy over Pakistan at the age-group and senior level in ICC tournaments 

U-19 World Cup: Yashasvi, bowlers help India crush Pakistan by 10 wickets, enter 7th final

Four gunmen shot to death nine people at a video game arcade in western Mexico, and among the dead were are three children aged 12, 13 and 14.
Prosecutors in the state of Michoacan said late Monday the attack left two other people wounded.
The attackers were apparently searching for specific targets, but then opened fire indiscriminately on customers. Two of the victims were aged 17 and 18.
The attack occurred Monday in the city of Uruapan, where gunmen attacked a municipal police patrol on Friday, killing one officer and wounding two others.
Turf wars between the Jalisco and Viagras drug cartels, as well as predecessors, have bloodied the city for several years.
In August, Jalisco cartel gunmen left nine bodies hanging from an overpass, with seven more corpses hacked up and dumped by the road nearby. Just down the road were three more bodies, for a total of 19.
They hung a banner from the overpass threatening the Viagras.

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