Family hangs woman, boyfriend over extramarital affair

A Pakistani mother-of-three and the man she was allegedly having an affair with were hanged from a tree on Thursday, with police blaming her husband, brother and father for carrying out the killings.
The grisly murders occurred in the village of Chak 56 around 55 kilometres (33 miles) northeast of the central city of Multan.
Hundreds of so-called “honour killings”, in which the victim, normally a woman, is killed by a male relative or relatives for bringing shame to the family are carried out in Pakistan every year.
“A woman and her alleged boyfriend were hanged to death by the woman’s father, brother and husband after the woman was caught on a date with her boyfriend in the backyard of her house,” Sardar Afzal Dogar, chief of the local police station told AFP.
The victims were named as Khalida Bibi, who was in her late twenties, and Mukhtiar Muhammad, who was around 19.

Trump, Clinton in tight race for White House – Poll

Less than two weeks before their first debate, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are in a very tight race for the White House, a national poll showed Wednesday.
The CBS News/New York Times survey found Clinton had just a two-point edge (46 to 44 percent) over her Republican rival in a two-way match-up among likely voters. Among registered voters, the Democratic nominee was five points ahead, at 46 to 41 percent.
When third party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein were included, the race was tied among likely voters — at 42 percent each — while Clinton had a slight edge (41 to 39 percent) among registered voters.

World’s oldest man turns 113, readies for Bar Mitzvah

The world’s oldest man turned 113 on Thursday and the Holocaust survivor living in Israel readied for the Bar Mitzvah he was denied a century ago, his family said.
Yisrael Kristal, an observant Jew from Zarnow in what is now Poland and currently living in the port city of Haifa, was born on September 15, 1903, three months before the Wright brothers’ first successful powered airplane flight.
Guinness World Records in March recognised him as the world’s oldest man.
While he turned 113 on Thursday under the Gregorian calendar, his family will celebrate the birthday at the end of September according to the Hebrew calendar, his daughter Shula Koperstoch told AFP.
The festivities will include a Bar Mitzvah that will come 100 years late.
The Bar Mitzvah is one of the most important ceremonies in the life of a Jew.

World Bank chief Kim heads for 2nd term

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim effectively won a second five-year term after nominations to lead the global development bank closed Wednesday with no other candidates proposed.
The World Bank executive board said in a statement that, following official procedures, it would formally meet with Kim as a candidate “with the expectation of completing the selection process by the 2016 Annual Meetings,” which take place on October 7-9.
Kim, 56, a Korean-American medical doctor who has focused the World Bank on programs to reduce extreme poverty, earned solid backing for a second term from the United States, France, Germany, China, and other major shareholders of the bank.
But as with his first nomination in 2012, the bank was criticized from inside and outside for not truly opening the selection process to all comers and not managing it in a fully transparent mode.
Following an unwritten rule, since the World Bank was created in the wake of World War II to help

Trump is in excellent physical health – Doctor

Donald Trump released lab results Thursday from a recent medical examination, with his personal physician stating that the Republican presidential candidate “is in excellent physical health.”

Hillary Clinton ‘healthy and fit’ – Doctor

Hillary Clinton is “healthy and fit to serve” as US president, says her doctor, as her campaign released updated medical information.
The statement said the Democratic presidential nominee “continues to improve” after a pneumonia diagnosis.
The disclosure came as her Republican rival Donald Trump released health data of his own on a medical chat show.

IMF gets $7.1m from Switzerland for global resource fund

Hopes may be rising for Nigeria and other natural resource endowed nations as the International Monetary gets the first contribution of $7.1 million into the dedicated fund for capacity development from Switzerland.
The planned pool to uplift management capacity of resource-endowed countries known as Managing Natural Resource Wealth Fund was launched in 2011, as a way to help countries manage their natural resource wealth.
According to a report from IMF, Switzerland has now become the first partner to contribute to the new six-year phase (2016–22).
The country has already contributed approximately $71 million since 2010, as supporter of IMF multi‑partner vehicles and used in regional centers of Africa and global funds focused on key topics like the Revenue Mobilization Fund, the Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism Fund, the Tax Administration Diagnostic Assessment Tool and the Managing Natural

What ever happened to Melania Trump?

At this stage in the US presidential race, the candidates’ spouses should be everywhere, smiling themselves to exhaustion as they do their bit for the campaign.
But for the past two months Donald Trump’s wife Melania has all but vanished.
The last big appearance of the 46-year-old former model born in Slovenia was at the Republican National Convention in July in Cleveland.
She gave a major speech designed to put a more human face on her husband, but which flopped miserably as it emerged her address plagiarized remarks by Michelle Obama from 2008 at the Democratic National Convention.
The ghostwriter of the speech took the fall and Melania Trump all but disappeared from the US political scene, where she was a rare presence anyway.
Last week she appeared briefly in New York as Trump gave a speech on national security, and accompanied her husband Saturday at the funeral of Phyllis Schlafly, a prominent American conservative.

‘I want Apple’: Myanmar abuzz over end of US sanctions

Myanmar cheered a US promise to end sanctions on Thursday, with residents in its commercial capital clamouring for American brands while politicians and business moguls heralded a new era of transparency and trade.
US President Barack Obama vowed to scrap the trade limits during Aung San Suu Kyi’s first visit to the White House since her party took power in March, ending decades of military domination.
The move marks a milestone in the country’s rapid transformation from an international pariah into Asia’s fastest-growing economy under the leadership of the Nobel laureate.
But Soe Naung Win, who owns a mobile phone shop in Myanmar’s bustling economic capital of Yangon, had more immediate concerns.
“I want Apple to officially come to Myanmar,” the 32-year-old told AFP. “I am crazy about the Apple brand and I want Apple to come here as an American brand.”
While iPhones are widely available in Myanmar, one of the world’s fastest-growing mobile phone markets, there are no official Apple stores in the country.
The US sanctions, imposed 20 years ago in a bid to put pressure on the former military regime, bar

Philippines President ‘ordered 1,000 killings’ while still mayor

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte gestures as he delivers his speech during the 250th Presidential Airlift Wing Command anniversary celebrations at Villamor air base in Manila on September 13, 2016.(AFP)

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the killings of around 1,000 criminals and political opponents while he was a city mayor – and shot one of them himself, a former assassin has claimed.
Edgar Matobato, 57, told the country’s Senate that he personally carried out about 50 abductions and deadly assaults.
“We’d remove their clothes, burn the bodies and chop them up,” he said.
One of the victims – a suspected kidnapper – was apparently fed alive to a crocodile in 2007 in southern Davao del Sur province.
Others were buried at a quarry owned by another member of the Davao Death Squad (DDS), which was made up of policemen and ex-communist rebels.
Speaking under oath, Mr Matobato said: “Our job was to kill drug pushers, rapists, snatchers.”
But he added that the targets were not always criminals.

Britain approves Hinkley Point nuclear deal

Britain’s government finally gave the green light to the controversial Chinese-backed Hinkley Point nuclear power plant Thursday — but with new conditions to address security concerns.
China has a one-third stake in the Hinkley Point project, and analysts have warned that Britain would have risked its relations with the world’s second-largest economy if it cancelled.
The announcement came two months after Prime Minister Theresa May ordered a review of the £18 billion (21 billion euro, $24 billion) deal brokered under her predecessor, David Cameron.
The board of French state-owned power company EDF had already approved its participation in the project in southwest England in July when May’s government said it wanted to review it.
“Having thoroughly reviewed the proposals for Hinkley Point C, we will introduce a series of measures to enhance security and will ensure Hinkley cannot change hands without the

Rights groups launch campaign for Snowden pardon

Edward Snowden speaks via video link at a news conference for the launch of a campaign calling for President Obama to pardon him on September 14, 2016 in New York City. The campaign, which includes representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and ACLU attorney Ben Wizner, looks to have the whistle blower pardoned from under the Espionage Act.(AFP)

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union launched a campaign Wednesday to push President Barack Obama to pardon Edward Snowden, the fugitive intelligence whistleblower living in Russia.
High-profile lawyers and celebrities including writer Joyce Carol Oates and actor Martin Sheen have already signed the campaign’s main prod, a petition at pardonsnowden.org that urges Obama to grant Snowden clemency before the president leaves office in January.
But the White House quickly said it had no intention of pardoning Snowden, a former contractor for the National Security Agency who released thousands of classified documents in 2013 revealing the vast US surveillance put in place after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest disputed that Snowden was a whistleblower and said he would enjoy legal due process at a trial in the United States, where he faces up to 30 years in prison for espionage and theft of state secrets.
“His conduct put American lives at risk and it risked American national security. And that’s why

Free WiFi providers not liable for illegal downloads – EU

The European Union’s top court on Thursday ruled that businesses offering free wireless internet services cannot be held liable for illegal downloads, a media report said.
It reported that the ruling came up in a case pitting electronics giant Sony against a German shop owner.
Sony had taken the owner of a German sound and light system shop to court, after an internet