Canada foreign minister resigns

3 February 2015 Last updated at 16:58

Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird has resigned as Canada's top diplomat.

Mr Baird, who has served multiple positions in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's cabinet, is also not expected to run for re-election as an MP.

"I will miss this place very much," Mr Baird said in a speech to Parliament. "The time has come to start a new chapter in my life."

The announcement comes as Egyptian-Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy is expected to be released from prison.

Mr Baird , who has worked to free Mr Fahmy, said on Monday the Al Jazeera journalist's release was "imminent".

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in statement Mr Baird was "one of the finest ministers that I have had the privilege of working with".

"John has always been willing to do a lot of heavy lifting in my various cabinets and has assumed daunting new responsibilities with unsurpassed energy, commitment and professionalism, never losing sight of the fact that he was serving the Canadian people."

An unnamed Canadian official told the Associated Press news agency the foreign minister had simply decided it was the right time to resign.

"The minister is looking to turn the page on 20 years of public service, and like anyone in public office is looking for new opportunities at the young age of 45," the official said.

International Trade Minister Ed Fast will replace him as foreign minister, CBC news reported.

Mr Baird, who was originally elected to Parliament as an MP from the Ottawa area in 2006, previously served as transport minister, environmental minister and president of the treasury board.

He began his political career in provincial politics in Ontario and is known as one of Mr Harper's most trusted ministers.

He had little international experience before becoming foreign minister in 2011.

On Tuesday Mr Baird called Mr Harper a friend and a mentor and said he will help the prime minister in the next election.

Former Liberal opposition leader Bob Rae wrote in a tweet he admired the foreign minister's energy and willingness to listen and engage.

"John Baird is bombastic, mean spirited, vicious, eloquent, generous, smart, cantankerous, hardworking, ingratiating, effective, human," Mr Rae tweeted.

20.24 | 0 komentar | Read More

Disney boosted by Frozen toy sales

3 February 2015 Last updated at 23:20

Entertainment giant Walt Disney has credited the continuing success of toys based on its hit film Frozen and an increase in visitors to its theme parks for an "incredibly strong quarter".

Net income rose 19% to $2.2bn (£1.5bn) in the quarter, with revenues up 9% to $13.4bn, both better than forecast.

Frozen toys sold particularly well, helping its consumer products division to report a 22% rise in sales.

"This was yet another incredibly strong quarter for our company," it said.

The company also reported a 9% rise in sales at its theme parks and resorts for the three months to the end of December, despite fears over a measles outbreak at Disney's Southern California parks in December.

Chief executive Robert Iger told CNBC that the outbreak had had no impact on attendance and that visitors were up compared to the same quarter last year.

However, sales in its studio entertainment division fell 2%. Disney said the fall reflected the weaker performance of its Big Hero 6 film compared to Frozen's strong performance in the same quarter a year ago.

Disney's shares, which have already risen 30% over the past year, rose a further 4.4% to $98.23 in after hours trading.

"Our results once again reflect the strength of our brands and high quality content," said Mr Iger.

20.24 | 0 komentar | Read More

NSA pledge on data of non-Americans

3 February 2015 Last updated at 19:11

The US electronic spying agency will no longer be allowed to keep indefinitely data collected from foreigners with no intelligence purpose.

The new rule will require information to be deleted after five years.

It is among a set of small changes to National Security Agency (NSA)'s practices announced by the White House on Tuesday.

The move makes no changes to the mass collection of data about US phone calls first revealed by Edward Snowden.

The Obama administration also "re-affirmed'' existing requirements that the government must delete communications to, from, or about US citizens if they lack intelligence value and set up new bureaucratic oversight over the requirement.

Previously, the NSA imposed no requirement to delete information collected "incidentally" on foreigners.

20.24 | 0 komentar | Read More

No murder charge for 'Power Ranger'

Ex-Power Rangers actor Ricardo Medina has been released without charge after his flatmate was stabbed to death with a sword.

Lawyers for the 36-year-old said he was acting in self defence after he was assaulted by Joshua Sutter at their home in LA.

Prosecutors have decided not to file charges, instead asking detectives to carry on investigating.

Speaking three days after his arrest, the actor said he was "very sorry".

He added: "I am very happy to be out of jail and my heart goes out to the Sutter family".

Medina said he and a female friend locked themselves in his bedroom after a row with Sutter.

He claimed his flatmate kicked the door open, at which point he grabbed the sword to protect himself.

His lawyer, Allen Bell said: "There simply aren't facts here for a crime. It is a self defence case.

"You have an individual here who was the victim of a beating in the kitchen area before he went to the bedroom and locked the door to secure himself from any continuing violence.

"He kicked the door in to continue the aggression", he continued.

Medina was arrested after calling emergency services.

Joshua Sutter, who was also 36, was pronounced dead in hospital.

Ricardo Medina played the Red Ranger on Power Rangers Wild Force in 2002 and later played Deker on Power Rangers Samurai.

Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter, BBCNewsbeat on Instagram and Radio1Newsbeat on YouTube.

20.24 | 0 komentar | Read More

S&P pays $1.4bn in sub-prime case

3 February 2015 Last updated at 16:55

Ratings agency Standard & Poor's (S&P) has agreed to pay a $1.38bn (£934m) settlement to US regulators over allegations it knowingly inflated its ratings of risky mortgage bonds.

The deal with the US Justice Department also resolves 19 other lawsuits.

In a statement, McGraw Hill - the parent company of S&P - said the "settlement contains no findings of violations of law".

S&P is the first credit agency fined over financial crisis-era violations.

The settlement covers mortgage bond ratings between 2004 and 2007.

The bonds, which included sub-prime mortgages, were blamed for the collapse of the US property market and subsequent global financial crisis.

Subprime trouble

The US Justice Department filed civil fraud charges against S&P two years ago.

It accused the credit rating firm of giving top recommendations - known as triple-A ratings - to mortgage bonds that it knew contained sub-prime mortgage debt and were therefore not as safe an investment as the rating suggested.

The US government said that S&P's ratings encouraged financial institutions around the world to buy and sell what proved to be "toxic" financial products in their trillions.

It also accused S&P of failing to warn investors that the housing market was collapsing in 2006 because doing so would have hurt its business.

At the time, S&P said the US government's case was entirely without factual or legal merit.

Major harm

"On more than one occasion, the company's leadership ignored senior analysts who warned that the company had given top ratings to financial products that were failing to perform as advertised," said Attorney General Eric Holder in a statement announcing the settlement.

"As S&P admits under this settlement, company executives complained that the company declined to downgrade underperforming assets, because it was worried that doing so would hurt the company's business.

"While this strategy may have helped S&P avoid disappointing its clients, it did major harm to the larger economy, contributing to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression."

S&P will pay $687.5m to the Justice Department and a further $678.5m to the 19 states that had brought lawsuits against it.

S&P will also pay $125m in a separate settlement with the California Public Employees' Retirement System.

20.24 | 0 komentar | Read More

Seven die as New York train hits car

4 February 2015 Last updated at 06:55

Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.

Wendy Urquhart reports: ''Witnesses at the scene praised firefighters who were quick to arrive''

A commuter train has hit a vehicle at a level crossing north of New York City, killing at least seven people and injuring 12, officials say.

The train, with about 800 passengers on board, hit the Jeep Cherokee near Valhalla - about 20 miles (32km) from New York - on Tuesday evening.

The vehicle's female driver was killed, along with six people on the train, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said.

The car and front carriage of the train caught fire following the crash.

The packed commuter train had left Grand Central Station in New York City and was heading to Wassaic in south-east New York State.

The crossing gates at the railroad had come down on top of the vehicle, which had stopped on the tracks, Metro-North Railroad spokesman Aaron Donovan said.

The driver got out to look at the damage, and then got back into the car to drive forward before it was hit by the train. It pushed the vehicle more than 120m (400ft).

It is not yet clear why the vehicle stalled on the tracks.

As a result of the collision the electrified third rail of the track came through the front carriage of the train.

Passengers had to escape from the rear of the train.

Mr Cuomo, who visited the site of the crash, said he witnessed "a truly ugly and brutal sight".

He added: "When you look at the damage done, it's actually amazing that not more people were hurt."

Passenger Justin Kaback told ABC News: "I was trapped. It was definitely scary - especially when people are walking by on the outside and said 'The train's on fire'."

Another passenger, Jamie Wallace, said passengers had started to panic and shout for a fire extinguisher as flames spread to his carriage.

Passenger Neil Rader told NBC that some passengers had managed to flee the train by breaking glass on the doors to get out, adding: "I've never seen anything quite like it."

Hundreds were taken to a local rock climbing gym following the crash.

Parts of the railroad remain closed on Wednesday.

Metro-North is the second-busiest railroad in the US, serving about 280,000 passengers a day in New York and Connecticut.

Last year, the National Transportation Safety Board issued rulings on five accidents that occurred on the railroad in 2013 and 2014, criticising Metro-North while also finding conditions had improved.

Did you witness the incident? Were you nearby at the time? You can share your experiences by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk. If you would be happy to speak further to a BBC journalist, please include a contact telephone number.

Have your say

20.24 | 0 komentar | Read More

Lee to publish Mockingbird 'sequel'

3 February 2015 Last updated at 17:13

Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.

The BBC's Nick Higham: "I think we can assume it will go like hot cakes"

An unpublished novel by Harper Lee is to finally see the light of day, 60 years after the US author put it aside to write To Kill a Mockingbird.

Go Set a Watchman, which features the character Scout Finch as an adult, will be released on 14 July.

Lee wrote it in the mid-1950s but put it aside on the advice of her editor.

"I thought it a pretty decent effort," said Lee, now 88. "I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years."

Set in the fictional southern town of Maycomb during the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman sees Scout return from New York to visit her father, the lawyer Atticus Finch.

According to the publisher's announcement: "She is forced to grapple with issues both personal and political as she tries to understand her father's attitude toward society, and her own feelings about the place where she was born and spent her childhood."

Lee's editor persuaded her to rework some of the story's flashback sequences as a novel in their own right - and that book became To Kill a Mockingbird.

"I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told," the author revealed.

The manuscript was discovered last autumn, attached to an original typescript of To Kill a Mockingbird.

"I hadn't realised it [the original book] had survived, so was surprised and delighted when my dear friend and lawyer Tonja Carter discovered it," Lee continued.

"After much thought and hesitation, I shared it with a handful of people I trust and was pleased to hear that they considered it worthy of publication."

Harper Collins plans an initial print run of two million copies.

To Kill a Mockingbird was published in July 1960 and won a Pulitzer Prize. Two years later it was adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring Gregory Peck.

Lee has rarely spoken to the media since the 1960s and is unlikely to do any publicity for her "new" book.

'Extraordinary gift'

In a statement, Harper Collins' Jonathan Burnham called Go Set a Watchman "a remarkable literary event" whose "discovery is an extraordinary gift to the many readers and fans of To Kill a Mockingbird".

He said: "Reading in many ways like a sequel to Harper Lee's classic novel, it is a compelling and ultimately moving narrative about a father and a daughter's relationship, and the life of a small Alabama town living through the racial tensions of the 1950s."

Go Set a Watchman will be published in the UK by William Heinemann, the original UK publisher of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Tom Weldon, of parent company Penguin Random House, said its publication would be "a major event".

"The story of this first book - both parent to To Kill a Mockingbird and rather wonderfully acting as its sequel - is fascinating," he continued.

"Millions of fans around the world will have the chance to reacquaint themselves with Scout, her father Atticus and the prejudices and claustrophobia of that small town in Alabama Harper Lee conjures so brilliantly."

To Kill a Mockingbird - abridged

In the small fictional town of Maycomb in the Depression-ravaged American South, a black man named Tom Robinson is falsely accused of raping a white woman.

A lawyer named Atticus Finch defends Robinson in court. The frenzy stirred up by the case and her father's quest for justice are seen through the eyes of Finch's six-year-old daughter Scout. The book explores issues of race, class and the loss of innocence.

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." - Atticus Finch to Scout.

"It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived." - Scout Finch.

Were you inspired by the original novel? How do you imagine Scout being in the second novel? You can email your thoughts to haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.

Have your say

20.24 | 0 komentar | Read More

Knight goes from court to hospital

3 February 2015 Last updated at 18:38

Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.

Marion "Suge" Knight turned himself in at a police station in Los Angeles

Former US rap music mogul Marion "Suge" Knight has been taken to hospital shortly after pleading not guilty to murder and attempted murder in court.

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said Mr Knight was seen by doctors after complaining of chest pains.

His earlier court appearance came five days after he was involved a hit-and-run incident in which one man died.

Prosecutors claim he intended to run over two men after an argument, but his lawyer has said it was an accident.

The 49-year-old faces a total of four charges under his real name Marion Hugh Knight and faces life in prison if convicted.

A truck Mr Knight was driving hit and killed his friend Terry Carter, 55, in the incident in the suburb of Compton last week. Another man, Cle "Bone" Sloan, 51, was injured.

The former record label boss's lawyer said his client was trying to escape an attack at the time.

At a brief court hearing in Compton, the judge set a bail hearing for Monday and Mr Knight was remanded in custody.

On Monday, a court commissioner revoked the $2m (£1.3m) bail after police said the defendant had a violent past and could intimidate witnesses.

Mr Knight founded Death Row Records in the 1990s but later declared bankruptcy and the company was sold at auction.

He helped launch the careers of artists including Dr Dre, Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg.

The music producer has previously been convicted of armed robbery and assault with a gun.

20.24 | 0 komentar | Read More

Armstrong charged over car crash

Lance Armstrong is due in court after being accused of leaving the scene of an accident and crashing into two parked cars.

According to police, the cyclist left the scene in the ski resort of Aspen, Colorado, before officers arrived.

Reports in the US media said his girlfriend Anna Hansen told police she was driving, before changing her story.

Armstong, 43, who was stripped of seven Tour de France titles for doping, faces court on 17 March.

He could face a fine and up to 90 days in jail if convicted of the charges of leaving the scene and driving too fast for the snowy conditions.

Hansen, 33, who lives in Aspen, was initially cited for the incident after telling police she had been driving the couple home from an Aspen Art Museum party.

She claimed to have lost control and hit two parked cars, before speaking to the owner and offering to pay for the damage, the police report said.

The Aspen Daily News  reported that the couple had made the "joint decision" to avoid negative headlines.

Officers then spoke to the valet at the event, who said Armstrong had driven away from the gala.

On 12 January, the charges were transferred to Armstrong. Hansen will not face charges.

Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France victories and banned for life from racing in 2012 by the US Anti-Doping Agency after he admitted using performance-enhancing drugs.

20.24 | 0 komentar | Read More

US senator questions hand-wash rules

4 February 2015 Last updated at 10:26

A US senator has suggested that restaurants should not have to make their employees wash their hands after toilet visits.

Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, made the comments on Monday during a speech criticising business regulations.

"Let them decide" such issues, the newly elected lawmaker said.

His argument was that restaurants which did not require workers to wash their hands would quickly go out of business.

"But I think it's good to illustrate the point, that that's the sort of mentality we need to have to reduce the regulatory burden on this country," Mr Tillis said.

He suggested that restaurants that did not require hand washing would have to alert customers with prominently displayed signs - itself a regulation.

Mr Tillis stood by his comments when interviewed later at the US Capitol.

"Sometimes there are regulations that maybe we want to set a direction, but then let those who are regulated decide whether or not it makes sense," Mr Tillis told the Associated Press news agency.

"They might pay a huge price," he said, but "they get to make that decision versus government."

The comments come as some Republican presidential hopefuls have questioned vaccine regulations amid a measles outbreak.

At least two hopefuls have said parents are justified in sometimes having their children avoid vaccinations generally required for attending school.

20.24 | 0 komentar | Read More