May, 2016

• 8 May

  Petition of 1.5 mn counted for Maduro’s removal

  

    Caracas, Venezuela / AFP Venezuela’s opposition forces said electoral authorities have tallied 1.5 million signatures seeking to force President Nicolas Maduro from power with a recall referendum. Oil-dependent Venezuela has descended ever deeper into economic turmoil as global crude prices have collapsed, triggering food shortages, rampant inflation and now an electricity crisis. The center-right opposition, which won control of the …

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• 8 May

  Currencies offer clues as USA poll nears

  

    Bloomberg Look to the currency market for an early reading on the U.S. presidential election. Six-month options-based measures of exchange-rate volatility now include the Nov. 8 vote, offering traders a way to express views on the outcome, or to hedge against price swings. While neither major political party has formally chosen candidates, Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee for …

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• 8 May

  Hope for change as ‘divided Lebanon’ goes to polls in 6 yrs

    Beirut / AFP Lebanese headed to the polls for the first time in six years on Sunday for municipal elections including in Beirut, where a new grassroots campaign is taking on entrenched parties. It is the first election of any kind in Lebanon since the last municipal polls in 2010, in a country that has not had a president …

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• 8 May

  Landslide buries 33 builders in southeast China

    BEIJING / AP Rescuers on Sunday searched for 33 construction workers missing in a landslide at the site of a hydropower project following days of heavy rain in southern China. Eight other workers were pulled out alive, officials and state-run media reported. Rocks and mud with a volume of 100,000 cubic meters (3.5 million cubic feet) buried an office …

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• 8 May

  India bus crash kills 14 after road collapse

    Shimla / AFP An overcrowded minibus fell into a deep gorge in India’s northern Himalayan region after a portion of the road caved in, killing 14 people, an official said on Sunday. Another 41 people were injured when the bus heading towards the popular tourist destination of Kinnaur rolled into the steep valley in Mandi district of Himachal Pradesh …

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• 8 May

  6 Afghan Taliban hanged

    Kabul / AFP Six Afghan Taliban inmates on death row were hanged on Sunday, government sources said, in the first set of executions endorsed by President Ashraf Ghani since he came to power in 2014. Ghani last month vowed a new hardline stance against the Taliban after an insurgent attack killed 64 people in Kabul, in what appeared to …

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• 8 May

  Netanyahu criticises general ‘who compares Israel to Nazi Germany’

  

    Jerusalem / AFP Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday criticised the deputy head of Israel’s armed forces for remarks appearing to compare contemporary Israeli society to Nazi Germany. “The comparison drawn in the words of the deputy chief of staff regarding events which characterised Nazi Germany 80 years ago is outrageous,” said Netanyahu. “They do injustice to Israeli society …

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• 8 May

  Israeli Islamic cleric starts 9-month prison term

    Beersheba / AFP Israeli Arab Muslim leader Raed Salah started a nine-month prison sentence on Sunday for fomenting riots at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque. Salah was accompanied by about 100 well-wishers, including Israeli Arab lawmakers, as he arrived at the prison in the city of Beersheba in southern Israel’s Negev desert, an AFP journalist said. At a farewell rally earlier …

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• 8 May

  Indonesia’s Muslim cyber warriors take on IS

  

    Jakarta / AFP A group of Indonesian “cyber warriors” sit glued to screens, as they send out messages promoting a moderate form of Islam in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country. Armed with laptops and smartphones, some 500 members of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU)— one of the world’s biggest Muslim organisations—are seeking to counter the Islamic State group’s extremist …

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• 8 May

  The stubborn tax gap

  

    The Internal Revenue Service has just released its latest estimate of the “tax gap” – the difference between what Americans pay in taxes and what they actually owe. For the years 2008 to 2010 (the IRS’s latest data), the annual gap averaged a huge $458 billion. It’s surely higher now. Gulp. If everyone religiously paid every penny owed, budget …

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