Lebanese city of Tripoli shook by deadly explosions

A minimum of 27 people have been killed and even more than 350 hurt by 2 blasts in Lebanon’s northern city of Tripoli, authorities state.

As Friday prayers ended, a blast hit the al-Taqwa mosque, normally gone to by prominent Sunni cleric Sheikh Salem Rafii. He was unharmed.

A second blast five minutes later on hit the al-Salam mosque.

War in neighbouring Syria has actually raised sectarian stress between the city’s Sunni Muslim and Alawite areas.

‘Like an earthquake’.

Sheikh Salem Rafii is one of the most popular Sunni leaders in Lebanon, BBC Arabic reports from Beirut, and is believed to be a possible target of the attack.

He is opposed to Lebanon’s militant Shia Hezbollah team and has previously advised the nation’s young men to join opposition boxers in Syria.

It is unclear whether he was at the mosque at the time of the attack, although some reports state he was providing a sermon.

The BBC’s Yolande Knell in Beirut says the cleric is expected to provide a statement after fulfilling the Muslim Clerics’ Council, the umbrella body for Lebanese Sunni leaders.

Ambulances hurried to the results of the blasts and heavy black smoke covered the sky.

Map showing Tripoli in Lebanon.

“It was as if there was an earthquake, the whole city appeared to be shaking,” a neighborhood citizen told Lebanon’s Daily Star paper.

Television images revealed damaged vehicles on fire, with their windows smashed, and individuals running with the roads trying to carry wounded individuals to security.

Bodies can be seen on the ground and windows were broken on surrounding apartment blocks.

The Associated Press reported that the preacher at the al-Salam mosque – the website of the 3rd explosion – is also an opponent of the Syrian government and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah.

No team has actually taken duty for the current attacks.

Tripoli, a city of nearly 200,000 individuals and Lebanon’s third largest, is among the nation’s most unstable sectarian geological fault, with a little Alawite population living in the midst of a Sunni majority.

The Alawite area often sustain Syrian Head of state Bashar al-Assad, with Sunnis mainly backing the rebels battling him.

The bombs come a week after a large automobile bomb shook a Shia area of Beirut, leaving lots dead. The location hit contained Hezbollah strongholds.

Outgoing Lebanese Head of state, Najib Mikati, condemned the current lethal surges, saying they aimed to “incite strife” and “drag Tripoli and it sons into reactionary moves”.

Lebanese city of Tripoli shook by deadly explosions

Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer retire within year

Microsoft has revealed that president Steve Ballmer will retire within the next YEAR, once it has actually found a successor.

Mr Ballmer is currently overseeing the change of Microsoft into a gadgets and services company.

He stated in a statement: “There is never a perfect time for this kind of transition, however now is the correct time.”.

“We need a CEO who will be here longer term for this new direction,” Mr Ballmer said.

The world’s most significant software business has developed a special committee to find a replacement. This committee includes Microsoft creator Bill Gates.

Mr Ballmer, 57, did well Mr Gates in 2000.

The two guys met in 1973 while researching at Harvard College, and Mr Ballmer joined the company in 1980.

Microsoft became the undeniable leader in the technology sector, and became the world’s biggest business by market price.

There had been investor objection of Microsoft recently for not reacting quickly enough to the method Apple and Google have led the way in mobile gadgets.

Microsoft struggled as customers started to reject desktops and laptop computers in favor of tablets and mobile devices.

While its Windows software is utilized on the substantial bulk of Computers, Microsoft made little impact in the fast-growing tablet and smartphone sections.

Microsoft’s improvement plan, revealed last month, is trying to resolve that.

In a memo to staff last month, Mr Ballmer said that the modifications implied the company was “rallying behind a single method as one business – not a collection of divisional techniques”.

The purpose, he said, was to react faster to modifications in the market.

Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer retire within year

Syria crisis: Kid refugees reach one million

UN agencies say the variety of kids required to run away Syria has actually reached one million, explaining the figure as “an outrageous milestone”.

The UN’s refugee agency and Unicef state a more two million kids are displaced within the country.

Even more than 100,000 people have been gotten rid of in the dispute, according to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

He has likewise asked for an examination “without delay” into the current alleged chemical tools attack near Damascus.

Activists state hundreds were killed in Wednesday’s attack, and Mr Ban is sending out disarmament chief Angela Kane to Damascus to push for an examination, his spokesman Eduardo del Buey stated on Thursday.

Russia – Syrian Head of state Bashar al-Assad’s main ally – on Friday urged Syrian rebels to make sure that a UN team currently in the nation had safe access to the site of the supposed attack.

The UN states kids now comprise half of all refugees fleeing Syria. About three-quarters of those kids are under 11.

“The youth of Syria are losing their homes, their family members and their futures,” stated UN high commissioner for refugees Antonio Guterres.

“Even after they have crossed a border to safety, they are traumatised, depressed and in demand of a reason for hope,” he stated.

Most of the kids have shown up in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt, the UN says, and progressively Syrians are running away to North Africa and Europe.

With its appeal for Syria less than 40 % funded, the two UN firms state they are struggling to satisfy the demands of the refugees.

Just 118,000 of the refugee kids have had the ability to continue in some kind of education, and a fifth have actually gotten psychosocial counselling.

The BBC’s Imogen Foulkes in Geneva says the companies are now warning of a lost generation that are ill-equipped to bring peace and stability to their nation in the future.

“We must all share the shame,” said Unicef executive director Anthony Lake, “because while we work to minimize the suffering of those influenced by this crisis, the worldwide neighborhood has actually fallen short in its obligation to this kid.

“We ought to stop and ask ourselves how, in all conscience, we can continue to fail the children of Syria.”.

Roger Hearn, Save the Kid’s regional supervisor for the Middle East, added: “It is dreadful that the world has actually stood and watched as one million children have been forced from their nation, terrified, traumatised and in many cases orphaned.”.

The UN says the dispute in Syria has caused the world’s worst refugee crisis for 2 Decade, with numbers not seen because the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Syria crisis: Kid refugees reach one million

A renaissance past Cartagena's historical walls

Visitors to Cartagena, the sultry port city on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, rarely leave its cobblestoned core. Surrounded by 500-year-old citadel walls, the Centro Historico is a Unesco World Heritage Site, with Spanish colonial architecture, worldwide branded luxury hotels and obvious traveller appeal.

A renaissance past Cartagena’s historical walls

Relevant write-up: Trekking to Colombia’s Lost City

Just south of its old walls lies Getsemani, Cartagena’s hippest community and one of Latin America’s most recent hotspots. Once a woebegone area characterised by criminal activity and crumbling architecture, Getsemani is undergoing a 21st-century renaissance. A new generation is invigorating the barrio (neighborhood), recovering public plazas and renovating 200-year-old buildings into privately-owned dress shop hotels and awesome nightclubs.

Like Rome, Cartagena’s coolest quarter was not constructed in a day. As recently as 10 years back, tourists hardly ever checked out Colombia at all. Cautious of the nation’s extensively reported terrible drug trade, travelers going south spent their vacations surfing in Costa Rica or partying in Buenos Aires instead.

As the Colombian economy has actually stabilised, Cartagena has gotten significant esteem in the hearts, minds and airfare purchases of international jetsetters. Prominent hotels such as Hotel Tcherassi and Sofitel Santa clam Clara are at ability throughout yearly occasions like the Hay Festival, a branch of the UK literary fair of the same name.

Regardless of being located close to the historical center, Getsemani continues to be something of an insider’s key. Its narrow streets, when filled with trash, are now lined with dress shop hotels preferred by intrepid tourists who seek an even more authentic Cartagena. The hotel was called for the Colombian patriot Esubio Maria Canabal, who lived in Getsemani when he battled for freedom from Spain in 1811.

A short walk away is Coffee shop Havana, Getsemani’s exceptionally popular Cuban salsa club. (Clinton saw Cartagena for the Summit of the Americas in April 2012, and images of her swigging beers among Café Havana’s salseros set US political sites ablaze.).

The celebration continues at Bazurto Social Club, a dancehall opened by Cartagena restaurateur Jorge Escadón in 2009. Escadón’s first spot– the fine dining bistro La Cevicheria– is a Centro Historico mainstay seen by moneyed vacationers. Anthony Bourdain filmed an episode of the TV program No Reservations there in 2008. The scene at Bazurto is significantly edgier, with Getsemani’s lovely young things partying till the wee hours, grooving to resident DJs and a dynamic house band. The kitchen area serves fried fish meals and tough cocktails such as the machacao, made from white rum, lime juice and potent yerba mate tea.

Getsemani is likewise house to culinary and cultural facilities such as Casa Pájaro, a mix art gallery, ice cream store and wine bar launched by Colombian sculptor and architect Emilio Hernandez in 2012. Trained as graphic designers, they kitted out the space in bright colors and covered the walls with framed photographs of the area.

Once a dangerous, drug-addled spot, the plaza is today filled with picnicking households, food carts selling homemade empanadas and residents talking over Aguila beers. Sometimes, someone from the barrio will stroll with wearing a t-shirt that checks out Orgullosamente Getsemanisense, or “Proud to be from Getsemani”.

Simply south of its ancient walls lies Getsemani, Cartagena’s hippest community and one of Latin America’s latest hotspots. As the Colombian economy has actually stabilised, Cartagena has actually gained considerable esteem in the hearts, minds and airfare purchases of international jetsetters. Its narrow roads, once filled with garbage, are now lined with boutique hotels favored by brave tourists who seek a more real Cartagena. (Clinton checked out Cartagena for the Summit of the Americas in April 2012, and pictures of her swigging beers among Café Havana’s salseros set United States political sites ablaze.).

The party continues at Bazurto Social Club, a dancehall opened by Cartagena restaurateur Jorge Escadón in 2009.

A renaissance past Cartagena's historical walls

Bo Xilai Disgraced political Leader goes on trial in China

Bo Xilai, the disgraced Chinese political leader as soon as tipped for the greatest levels of power, has gone on trial on charges of bribery, corruption and abuse of power.

The previous Chongqing Communist Party leader is accused of accepting cash from two businessman, the court stated.

The abuse of power charge associates with his wife’s duty in the murder of a British businessman, it said.

Mr Bo’s trial is China’s many politically-charged in years.

Two years ago the 64-year-old high-flier was seen as a candidate for advertising to the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s seven-member leading decision-making body.

In February 2012, as China prepared for its once-in-a-decade management handover, questions emerged over the death of the British businessman, Neil Heywood.

Mr Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, has actually considering that been founded guilty of Mr Heywood’s murder. Mr Bo deals with numerous costs and is extensively anticipated to be discovered guilty.

His downfall was viewed as the most significant political shake-up to hit China’s ruling elite in decades.

‘Relatively and justly’.

The trial – which started at 08:30 (00:30 GMT) – is happening at the Intermediate Individuals’s Court in Jinan, which is in Shandong province. The court is providing an account of procedures on its official microblog.

“I hope the judge will try this case fairly and justly according to the law of the nation,” Mr Bo apparently said.

Five of Mr Bo’s loved ones are said to be in court, along with 19 reporters and 84 other individuals. Foreign journalists have not been allowed.

According to the indictment published by the court, Mr Bo is accused of getting bribes totalling 21.8 m yuan ($3.56 m; � 2.28 m) from two Dalian-based business people.

The court microblog estimated Mr Bo as stating about among the cases: “That Tang Xiaolin gave me three bribes – that did not take place. He asked me to assist him sort out something, and these were all done according to treatment.”.

Mr Bo stated he had actually admitted this “against his will” under questioning, including: “Exactly what I suggested was that I was willing to take the legal responsibility however I had no concept of all these details back then.”.

The abuse of power fee is linked to his wife’s part in Mr Heywood’s murder and his therapy of Wang Lijun, his now-jailed previous police chief whose flight to the US consulate brought the case out into the open, it stated.

Hearings would last 2 days, CCTV said in a tweet, with a verdict “most likely in early September”.

Security was tight at the court, with authorities blocking evictions and lining roads getting at it.

Earlier this week, Mr Bo’s son, Bo Guagua, released a statement from the US saying he hoped his dad would have the chance “to answer his critics and defend himself without constraints of any kind”.

The verdict, he stated, would hold no weight if his health had actually been “bartered for my dad’s acquiescence or my mom’s more co-operation”.

Bo Xilai Disgraced political Leader goes on trial in China

Ducks were bird flu melting pot

Ducks were the melting pot of viruses that caused the brand-new bird flu emerging in China early this year, according to Chinese researchers tracking the advancement of the virus.

Ducks were bird flu ‘melting pot’.

Ducks got viruses from migrating birds and passed them onto chickens.

The research, released in the diary Nature, showed humans were probably then infected with H7N9 due to call with chickens at live poultry markets.

There have been 133 human cases of the bird flu and 43 fatalities.

The team, including analysts at the Shantou College Medical University, were trying to trace the root of the break out.

They took samples from 1,341 chickens, ducks, geese, pigeons, partridges and quail in addition to faecal and water samples from live poultry markets.

By comparing the resemblances and differences between the hereditary codes of influenza viruses in each of the animals, scientists can exercise how the virus spread and progressed.

Their report said: “Domestic ducks seem to serve as crucial intermediate hosts by acquiring and keeping varied influenza viruses from migratory birds.

“This most likely led to break outs in chickens resulting in the fast spread of the [virus] from live poultry markets which became the source of human infections.”.

Market hazard.

There have actually been extremely couple of cases since China presented controls on live chicken markets.

The authors included: “To regulate H7N9 and associated viruses ultimately it is needed to reconsider the management of live chicken markets in urban locations.”.

The study also revealed a comparable bird flu called H7N7, which appears able to contaminate mammals. The scientists said this team of H7 bird flus could “present threats beyond the existing outbreak”.

Commenting on the research, Dr Peter Horby, from the Oxford College Clinical Study Facility in Vietnam, stated: “This kind of microbial forensics is necessary in helping us piece together the origin of novel avian influenza viruses such as H7N9.

“When integrated with analyses of poultry manufacturing and advertising and marketing systems, it can help us identify practices that might minimize the threats of H7N9 and various other novel viruses re-emerging.

“Whilst this brings us closer to understanding the path to introduction, even more investigator work is should fully expose the ecology and source of H7N9 viruses, which seem to be concentrated in live poultry markets but elusive somewhere else in the manufacturing chain.

“The discovery of a story H7N7 family tree that can infect ferrets advises us that even if H7N9 does not return, there are threats lurking amongst the terrific diversity of avian influenza viruses.”.

Ducks were bird flu melting pot

Lady Gaga Dressed

Are the vocalist’s outfits cynical provocations or considered creative statements? Wardrobe Decoder’s Katya Foreman mulls the meaning of Gaga’s get-up.

Lady Gaga Dressed for success

It’s an intriguing indication of the times that the ‘we-can-do-anything’ millennial generation has chosen shape-shifting performance artist Woman Gaga as their pop princess. She presented herself as a half-human, half-motorcycle hybrid on the cover of her last album, Born By doing this, hissing red-lipped at the lens like a vampire, while her provocative barrage of otherworldly clothing has consisted of the infamous ‘meat outfit’ she used to the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) in 2010, crafted from flank steak. (Time named it the top style statement of that year; it has its own Wikipedia page.) The best ways to up the ante? The following year, Gaga– real name Stefani Germanotta– done in full drag at the VMAs as male alter-ego Jo Calderone and was carried down the red carpet at the Grammys in an egg from which she hatched, on stage, to do Born By doing this– the ludicrous lovechild of Björk and Spinal Tap. Various other crazy clothing include a bodysuit sharpened from plastic bubbles and a large head-to-toe clothing made from human hair.

While her closest contemporaries, Katy Perry and Rihanna, enact good girl/bad girl variations of male fantasies, 27-year-old Gaga scuppers all preconceptions of how a female pop star must look and act. As she specifies on the title track of her debut album The Popularity, Gaga is “obsessively opposed to the normal.”.

“I such as to free myself with my capability to change … That’s who I am and I will constantly be that means: ruthless and fearless and vicious,” Gaga informed fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier in an hour-long job interview launched as the documentary Gaga by Gaultier. “I such as to feel that I can specify my fame and define my charm for myself, which is why I am so watchful and relentless about my image and my music. I will not enable– no issue how effective I become– the public to show or specify what it is that I create or what I think is lovely or what I think is a hit pop record.”.

Dressed for fight?

Accustomeding outlandish getup to cloak her true mission, Gaga has placed herself as a figurehead for the outsider. A kept in mind Helps and LGBT activist, Gaga has actually just recently dedicated efforts to getting rid of bullying, claiming she was picked on for being various as a child– although fellow former pupils have actually described her as a friendly, suburban student who had no trouble fitting in.

The 2011 ABC special A Very Gaga Thanksgiving saw Gaga carry out the track Hair at a piano in the candlelit banquet hall of her Manhattan alma mater, the $37,000-a-year Convent of the Sacred Heart. “This tune has to do with your identification being the most essential thing to you, and no area what anyone states or how much you have or the amount of you don’t, it’s exactly what’s on the inside that matters,” Gaga tells the fans she’s nicknamed her “Little Monsters”. Throughout the performance she stacks wigs on her head, in tones of ginger and spearmint, all the while preserving her trademark Poker Face.

While Gaga claims her elegant, 18-month Beast Ball world tour left her in debt, Forbes magazine states Gaga is the world’s second-most-powerful celebrity (Oprah Winfrey holds the leading slot) and the top-earning star under the age of 30, having actually created an estimated $80m (â�¤ 51m) between June 2012 and June 2013.

In addition to wealth, column and impact inches, Gaga also has integrity. She’s received 5 Grammys and 3 Brits to date, plus over 20 MTV awards, and fellow musicians rate her work. Tony Bennett, who duetted with her on the Thanksgiving holiday unique and at Obama’s 2013 inauguration, has explained her as “extremely creative and really efficient and I think, as time goes on, she may become America’s Picasso.” (Gaga was atypically modest about the distinction: “I don’t know if I’m the brand-new Picasso, however I’m certainly turned like numerous of his paintings.”) The ever-evolving Madonna, to whom Gaga is frequently likened, staged a tongue-in-cheek catfight with her on Saturday Time Live a couple of years ago; when contrasts were made in between Born By doing this and Madonna’s Express Yourself, the grande dame of pop quipped, “I’m an actually huge fan of [Born By doing this] … I’m glad that I helped Gaga write it.”.

Lady Gaga Dressed for success

Detractors are, inevitably, plentiful. An indignant NME article entitled Woman Gaga– Freak or Fraud encapsulated the naysayers’ argument: “It’s kind of fitting that she’s called after a sound infants make due to the fact that there’s something about Woman Gaga that turns otherwise smart adults into gurgling infants … It’s popular song, not an elegant outfit party. That’s the thing with Woman Gaga– she’s not really a pop star, she’s a fashion icon, with all the vanity, phoniness and hollow screen that involves.” Pop is style, as any site visitor to the current David Bowie retrospective at London’s V&A gallery can testify. (Bowie is an essential impact on Gaga, along with Madonna, Michael Jackson and Queen, whose ‘Radio Gaga’ partially motivated her name.) “I like fashion and style so much [because] I feel the capability to create an alternate fantasy and truth for myself,” Gaga informed Gaultier. “If I do it over and over once again each day of my life, sleeping with my wigs and my jewellery and my dresses … in some way, the fantasy becomes my truth.”.

Designer’s dream.

This voracious hunger for dressing up has seen the world’s top designer welcome Gaga with open arms, from Giorgio Armani to the late Alexander McQueen, to whom she played muse, as one of the couple of mortals able to manage his well-known lobster claw shoes. Following McQueen’s death by suicide, the dedicated vocalist in 2012 at a Christie’s London auction broke a world record for the greatest cost ever paid for a McQueen production by paying out â�¤ 85,250 ($133,322) for a gown from the late designer from the individual collection of style collector Daphne Guinness.

After five worthwhile years of collaboration, Gaga has parted methods with her visionary stylist Nicola Formichetti, who headed up Haus of Gaga– the vocalist’s Warholian Factory incubator for her wacky sartorial principles and props. Haus creations consist of the cigarette-encrusted tones from the Telephone discount, a metallic brassiere designed to shoot flames on command, the Grammy egg and, of course, the meat gown. It remains to be seen how Formichetti’s departure will influence Gaga’s look but, of late, she’s been demo-ing a (relatively) natural look, attending an arts occasion in the Hamptons with long raven locks, very little cosmetics and a black leather outfit with cut-outs.

As promo prepares for the launch of her third cd, Artpop, the focus has actually been on the art. Gaga appeared nude in a video promoting performance artist Marina AbramoviÄ�’s Kickstarter job, while the sleeve design for lead single Applause sees her clad in a monochrome clothing however smeared in technicolor face paints– Pin-Ups meets Pierrot. A scheduled performance at the VMAs, once again, will see the project fully unfurl, however will it be more au naturel antics or a rainbow confection? The one thing we can be guaranteed of is that it will fill tabloid pages, Pinterest boards and Twitter for the foreseeable future– whether the pop empress is clad, or disrobed to her bare basics.

“I like to liberate myself with my capacity to change … That’s who I am and I will always be that way: fearless and relentless and vicious,” Gaga informed fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier in an hour-long meeting launched as the documentary Gaga by Gaultier. The 2011 ABC special A Very Gaga Thanksgiving holiday saw Gaga perform the track Hair at a piano in the candlelit banquet hall of her Manhattan alma mater, the $37,000-a-year Convent of the Sacred Heart. An indignant NME blog post entitled Lady Gaga– Freak or Fraud encapsulated the cynics’ argument: “It’s kind of fitting that she’s called after a noise infants make because there’s something about Lady Gaga that turns otherwise smart adults into gurgling infants … It’s pop music, not a fancy gown party. After 5 worthwhile years of collaboration, Gaga has parted methods with her visionary stylist Nicola Formichetti, who goinged up Haus of Gaga– the vocalist’s Warholian Factory incubator for her wacky sartorial ideas and props. It remains to be seen how Formichetti’s departure will impact Gaga’s appearance but, of late, she’s been demo-ing a (fairly) natural appearance, attending an arts occasion in the Hamptons with long raven locks, very little cosmetics and a black leather dress with cut-outs.

Lady Gaga Dressed