viral newses

Yangon, Myanmar – Officials bribed and bullied voters, stuffed ballot boxes and pushed ahead with a May 2008 referendum on a new constitution despite the deadliest natural disaster in Myanmar ‘s recorded history. For the generals, the charter was a vital step towards a carefully planned new system that would resemble a democracy but keep the military firmly in charge. And it could not be postponed. Even by Cyclone Nargis , which tore through the country’s Irrawaddy Delta leaving about 140,000 people dead. Political activist Tint Soe was in the minority, at least according to the official results, when he picked up a pen at a polling booth and voted “no” to the military government ‘s proposed constitution. “It was enacted by force when hundreds of thousands of civilians were dying,” Tint Soe told Al Jazeera. “It was a merciless act.” Tint Soe is now a legislator for the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD), which last month began its boldest bid yet to wrest power from the ...

“Sometimes you have to walk.” This was how US President Donald Trump described the sudden end to his summit with North Korea ‘s leader, Kim Jong Un. The pair arrived in Vietnam with hopes of building on last year’s historic summit in Singapore. However, less than two days later, they left without signing an agreement, and it’s unclear when they’ll talk again. North Korea’s neighbours South Korea and China both said they were disappointed with the outcome. So what went wrong? And where does it leave the nuclear threat from North Korea? Presenter: Hoda Abdel-Hamid Guests: Se-Woong Koo – Publisher, Korea Expose Robert Gutsche – Associate Professor at Lancaster University Emil Dall – Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and Specialist on Nuclear Proliferation  Source:   Al Jazeera News Read More from Viral Newses https://ift.tt/2XEmD06

Great Britain’s women take silver as Australia hold on for gold in a thrilling finish to the team pursuit final at the 2019 Track Cycling World Championships in Poland. WATCH MORE: GB take silver as Australia smash team pursuit world record Available to UK users only. Read More from Viral Newses https://ift.tt/2Tiaw9C

Bangladesh told the United Nations Security Council it cannot take any more refugees from Myanmar, some 18 months after more than 700,000 mainly Rohingya Muslims fled across the border amid a brutal military crackdown. Attacks on security posts by Rohingya insurgents in Myanmar ‘s Rakhine state triggered the violence that the United Nations, the United States, Britain and others describe as ethnic cleansing. Myanmar denies the accusations. Rohingya crisis: UN warns of ongoing genocide “I regret to inform the council that Bangladesh would no longer be in a position to accommodate more people from Myanmar,” Bangladesh Foreign Secretary Shahidul Haque told the UN on Thursday . Haque accused Myanmar of “hollow promises and various obstructionist approaches” during negotiations on returns. “Not a single Rohingya has volunteered to return to Rakhine due to the absence of [a] conducive environment there,” Haque said. Myanmar says it has been ready to accept returning ref...

Wall Street electronic-trading startup Trumid Financial went out hat in hand last year for more money to fund its expansion plans. Business Insider got a look at Trumid’s investor presentation, which gives an inside look at what it’s like to start a venue that matches bond buyers and sellers using technology. As you can see from the slides, it’s not easy. Volumes, at least in the beginning, can be hard to find. Nonetheless, Trumid landed $53 million from stock exchanges in Germany and Singapore in last year’s fundraising round. The Asia exchange signed on as the lead investor to help fuel the startup’s push into that region. Already backed by Peter Thiel and George Soros, the company declined to comment on whether the billionaire investors participated in this round. A person close to the startup said it continues to enjoy financial support from its early investors. Trumid looks to be one of the survivors in what has been a multiyear period of expansion and consolidation among do...

President Donald Trump came just shy of the biggest economic promise of his presidency in 2018, according to data released Thursday, in the first full year since Republicans passed sweeping tax cuts. The Bureau of Economic Analysis on Thursday released gross-domestic-product growth for both the fourth quarter and all of 2018, which showed that the US economy grew at a 2.9% rate last year (2.88%, to be exact). While that annual growth rate was the strongest since 2015, it still came in just shy of Trump’s long-promised 3% annual GDP growth. Many White House advisers were publicly confident that the US would make it to 3%, but a fade into the end of the fourth quarter seemed to tail off growth just enough to move the number below that threshold. Read more: US economy grows faster than expected in the 4th quarter, but annual GDP misses Trump’s goal There were two key areas where the GOP and Trump said the tax law enacted at the end of 2017 would boost economic growth. The first w...

Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s attempt to resign , reflects a long-time rivalry between hardliners and moderate factions within Iran’s politics, according to Iran experts. Despite President Hassan Rouhani ‘s rejection of Zarif’s resignation, observers believe that the foreign minister’s unexpected move was the result of an  intensifying internal power struggle  in Iran that is far from over. “Zarif’s resignation has exposed the political faultline between competing political factions in the country,” said Luciano Zaccara, p rofessor of Gulf Politics at the Qatar University Gulf Studies Center.   The confrontation is between moderate forces within the government, including Zarif, and hardliners who dominate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a military force directly under the control of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Zarif has been the top Iranian official working to improve relations between the Islamic Republic and Western countries. But h...

“We have found through our analysis that FY2 earnings revision ratios are a useful indicator for trying to determine market inflection points. In our work, FY2 earnings revision ratios measure the number of analysts increasing their earnings estimates relative to the total number of analyst revisions over the prior 60 days. Thus, the actual data is somewhat of a diffusion index, with values greater than 50% indicating earnings optimism and values below 50% indicating earnings pessimism. Based on our analysis, this indicator tends to work best from extremely low values, which we define as a level at or below minus one standard deviation from the mean. As you can see from Exhibit 1, this indicator recently hit this barrier. More important, we found that S&P 500 performance is quite attractive in the months following such “poor” readings. By contrast, significant losses have been quite rare. In fact, all of the double-digit losses throughout this period occurred during 2002, which ...

Hanoi, Vietnam –  US President Donald Trump has said North Korea’s demand that the US lift economic sanctions in their entirety forced the US to walk away from reaching an agreement at a summit in Vietnam . The announcement, made in a short statement from the White House on Thursday, confirmed that “no agreement was reached at this time.”  The “Joint Agreement Signing Ceremony”, as well as a working lunch scheduled for Thursday afternoon in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, were cancelled following the announcement. “It was about the sanctions. They wanted sanctions to be lifted in their entirety and we couldn’t do that,” Trump told reporters at a press conference in Hanoi, which was brought forward by two hours due to the turn of events. Surprise announcement The announcement came as a surprise after Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un  appeared confident and optimistic when talking to the press earlier on Thursday as well as on Wednesday. “ North Korea is wi...

Brendan McDermid/Reuters Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s $74 billion takeover of Celgene is in jeopardy after Bristol-Myers’ second-largest shareholder turned against it.  Wellington Management, which owns a 7.7% stake in Bristol-Myers, laid out three reasons it opposed the deal.  The deal was questioned by investors and analysts since it was announced. Watch Bristol-Myers Squibb and Celgene trade live. The pharma giant Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s $74 billion takeover of Celgene , the largest healthcare deal in history, is in jeopardy after Bristol-Myers’ second-largest shareholder turned against the deal. Wellington Management, which has about $1 trillion in client money and a 7.7% stake in Bristol-Myers, said in a press release out Wednesday evening that it did not support the proposed merger for three reasons. “While Wellington agrees that Bristol-Myers should be active in business development that secures differentiated science and broadens the future revenue bas...

There is evidence that Israel committed crimes against humanity in responding to 2018 protests in Gaza , as snipers targeted people clearly identifiable as children, health workers and journalists, according to a United Nations report. “Israeli soldiers committed violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. Some of those violations may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity,” the chair of the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on the protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Santiago Canton, said in a statement on Thursday. In response, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz called the report “false and biased”. The inquiry, set up by the UN Human Rights Council, investigated possible violations from the start of the protests on March 30, 2018, through to December 31. “More than 6,000 unarmed demonstrators were shot by military snipers, week after week at the protest sites,” it said. “The Commission found reasonable grounds to believe that Isra...

Dwyane Wade hits a stunning buzzer-beater in the final seconds to give the Miami Heat a win over defending NBA champions Golden State Warriors. Read More from Viral Newses https://ift.tt/2GRzIOd

The captured  Indian  fighter pilot who was attacked by a mob and then paraded on video by  Pakistan ‘s army,  will be released, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Thursday.  “We have an Indian pilot. As a peace gesture we will release him tomorrow,” Khan told a joint sitting of parliament in the capital, Islamabad. Khan also said he had unsuccessfully tried to make telephone contact with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on Wednesday night.  Indian media have given his name as Abhinandan Varthaman. Following Pakistani villagers and soldiers filming his capture and captivity on Wednesday in clips, that have since gone viral on social media, the pilot identified by Islamabad as Indian Wing Commander Abhinandan has fast emerged as the human face of the dangerous flare-up between the arch-foes. Indian media have given his name as Abhinandan Varthaman. Varthaman and the Indian Air Force (IAF) have been at the heart of the crisis bet...

Two Saudi sisters who have been hiding in Hong Kong since September face an uncertain future on the last day of their permitted stay in the autonomous Chinese city. “We’re terrified that we’ll be forced to return to Saudi Arabia ,” they said on Twitter under the handle HKSaudiSisters on Wednesday, a day before the end of their permit to stay in Hong Kong . “We applied for an emergency rescue visa for a 3rd country over two months ago. We [had] hoped that our emergency visa [would] be granted without delay.” Two Saudi sisters have fled #SaudiArabia & are now in Hong Kong. They are at risk of being deported back to the kingdom, which they say they escaped after experiencing beatings by their father & brothers. Don’t send them back. https://t.co/yDuRBKp7ro — Amnesty International (@amnesty) February 27, 2019 The sisters, who say they have converted to Christianity, claim they fled from a family holiday in Sri Lanka to Hong Kong , from where they had hoped to board a con...

The Insider Picks team writes about stuff we think you’ll like. Business Insider has affiliate partnerships, so we get a share of the revenue from your purchase. Like scores of other readers across America, I was recently enraptured by the Silicon Valley nightmare tale of Theranos , the healthcare startup that promised to revolutionize blood testing and seduced notable investors, large pharmacy partners, and hopeful customers alike. It never delivered on its promise, blew through hundreds of millions of dollars, and harmed countless livelihoods along the way. Instances of corporate deceit and fraud like this aren’t new. When power and money are at stake, people often trade in their consciences for more immediately gratifying rewards — and face the consequences when their elaborate schemes spiral out of control. Theranos now joins names like Bernie Madoff and Enron, cemented in history and the syllabi of business-ethics courses as lessons of questionable business practices that yo...

Great Britain’s Elinor Barker wins the gold medal in the 10km scratch race, following a huge crash and pile-up in the final laps at the 2019 World Track Cycling Championships. READ MORE: Barker wins gold for Great Britain Available to UK users only. Read More from Viral Newses https://ift.tt/2tE8CSc

Hanoi, Vietnam – Days before US President Donald Trump reached Hanoi for his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un , another Donald was making waves in the Vietnamese capital. That was “Billionaire Donald”, as he calls himself, or Russell White, the other name the 61-year-old Canadian gave himself because searching for Donald on Google would bring up the US president. As Hanoi geared up this week to host the second United States – North Korea summit, the Trump impersonator had been walking around the city alongside a Kim lookalike, posing for photos and attracting media attention – before the latter was held and then deported by the Vietnamese authorities. Hours before Trump meets Kim on Wednesday, Al Jazeera caught up with Billionaire  Donald to find out about the reaction in Hanoi, his next steps and what he thinks of his famous lookalike. Al Jazeera : How did all of this come about? Billionaire Donald : Well, I owned bars in Canada and I was doing fine until I h...

Bethnal Green, London, United Kingdom – Shamima Begum has been in the headlines ever since she gave a series of interviews earlier this month, saying she would like to come home.   The British teenager, who is now 19 and has recently given birth, travelled to Syria to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ( ISIL or ISIS) group in February 2015.   Bethnal Green, where Begum grew up and attended school, is a multicultural locality in the heart of London’s East End and, today, its residents feel under scrutiny.   “It’s everywhere,” says Salma Rahman, a 35-year-old housewife who lives in Bethnal Green.   “As a Muslim and especially as a British Bangladeshi (the same background as Begum), you fear you might all be tarred with the same brush.”  The attention the area has received in recent weeks is nothing new.   Since 2015, the Bethnal Green Academy, the school Begum attended, has changed its name twice: first to Green Spring Academy Shoreditch ...

Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit has obtained documents that reveal the wider use of encrypted “self destruct” messaging systems by US law enforcement agencies, raising serious questions about accountability and transparency. The documents, obtained through public record requests, show Missouri State Highway Patrol equipped their officers in 2014 with a secret messaging application called “Silent Phone” which systematically destroys text messages. Their patrol officers were on the front line, policing the public unrest that shook the town of Ferguson, near St Louis, after the shooting of an unarmed African American by a white police officer. Following the protests in Ferguson, Black Lives Matter became internationally recognised for its campaign against the killing of African-Americans by police. “It’s particularly alarming that any police entity would, in a systemic and organised manner, use a burner app for their communications,” explained Mark Pedroli, a lawyer with the Missour...

Following is a transcript of the video. Michael Cohen: He is a racist. He is a conman. He is a cheat. Michael Cohen’s most explosive claims about Trump in his congressional testimony Campaign Motives Cohen: Donald Trump is a man who ran for office to make his brand great, not to make our country great. He never expected to win the primary. The campaign, for him, was always a marketing opportunity. Mr. Trump knew from Roger Stone in advance about the WikiLeaks drop of emails. Alleged Racist Comments Cohen: Mr. Trump is a racist. He once asked me if I could name a country run by a black person that wasn’t a “shithole.” This was when Barack Obama was President of the United States. And while we were once driving through a struggling neighborhood in Chicago, he commented that only black people could live that way. And, he told me that black people would never vote for him because they were too stupid. Alleged Wealth Inaccuracy Cohen: Mr. Trump is a cheat. It was my experi...

Beth Mead scores a “stunning” goal to give England a 2-1 win against Brazil in their opening SheBelieves Cup match. Read More from Viral Newses https://ift.tt/2VpGopY

Ellen White pulls England level just after half-time in their opening SheBelieves Cup match against Brazil. Read More from Viral Newses https://ift.tt/2U9Z0dC

Michael Cohen, the former “fixer” and personal lawyer of US President Donald Trump , gave his testimony on Wednesday before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.  Cohen, who worked for Trump from 2006 until 2018 in roles including as his personal lawyer, co-president of Trump Entertainment and deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the special counsel’s Russia probe in August.  Those charges include fraud, lying to Congress and violating campaign finance laws, which he said he committed at Trump’s direction – an allegation the president has denied.  Cohen has been sentenced to three years in prison. The start of that prison sentence is set to begin in May.  Here are the key moments from the testimony:  Cohen says he fears Trump may not allow ‘peaceful transition’  Cohen said during his congressional testimony on Wednesday that he fears Trump will not allow his successor to peacef...