Child deaths are on the rise in Syria’s war, according to estimates that show one in four civilians killed in 2016 was under the age of 18.The authors of a study published in the Lancet Global Health said aerial bombing in urban areas had “a disproportionate lethal impact on civilians, particularly children”.Civilians accounted for 71% of the 143,630 deaths in the first six years of the Syrian war, noted the study, while 29% were opposition fighters.The report, based on conflict-related deaths recorded by the Violations Documentation Center (VDC), followed recent calls for UN member states to conduct an urgent review of military rules of engagement after a record number of civilians were killed by explosive weapons last year. Over the course of the conflict, the proportion of child civilian casualties increased from 9% of 4,354 deaths in 2011 to 23% of 11,444 civilian deaths in 2016. The rise stemmed from “increased reliance on aerial bombing by the Syrian government and international partners”, found the researchers.Professor Debarati Guha-Sapir of the University of Louvain’s public health health faculty, the study’s lead author, said: “Our findings underscore the highly limited efficacy of shelling and aerial bombing against opposition fighters, and the disproportionate lethal impact on civilians, particularly children.“These findings call into question the use of these weapons in populated urban areas and suggest possible indiscriminate weapons use contrary to international humanitarian law.” A total of 57% of civilian deaths were caused by airstrikes and shelling, compared with 10% of opposition fighters, the study found. But while male civilian deaths were caused equally by airstrikes, shells, shootings and executions, women and children were mostly killed by shells and airstrikes. The impact increased as the use of these weapons grew from 2014, when international parties intensified the aerial bombing of Syria, the report said.Of 11,444 civilian deaths in Syria recorded in 2016, 2,662 were children, and 1,582 were women, the study found. The war has displaced more than half of the Syrian population and, as of 2014, reduced life expectancy by up to 20 years, according to the Syrian Centre for Policy Research.The impact on civilians of barrel bombs – improvised, fragmenting explosives filled with shrapnel, nails or further explosives – was striking, the study noted. Civilians accounted for about 97% of barrel bomb deaths, “suggesting indiscriminate or targeted warfare … possibly constituting a war crime”, said the researchers.In Syria, barrel bombs have been dropped on hospitals, markets, and homes, with “double tap” strikes used in an attempt to eliminate first responders and medical services. Earlier this year, the Lancet published a report by its Commission on Syria highlighting how healthcare was being used as a weapon of war in the country.Husam Alkatlaby, the executive director of the VDC, said documenting Syria’s dead was important but heartbreaking work that was becoming increasingly difficult.“There are a large number of victims,” Alkatlaby said. “It is not easy to collect the data, but it is important for any transitional justice process. We believe we cannot reach any peace agreement in Syria without a transitional justice process. But the problem is, people have lost hope. After seven years, they do not believe in an international justice system.“Syrian people are saying to us, ‘Everybody in the world knows we are dying every day, but nobody is doing anything to save our dying children.’”Guha-Sapir said the impact of barrel bombs on civilians supports claims that the weapons have been used to directly target them.“Approximately three-quarters of recorded incidents of explosive weapon use in Syria have occurred in densely populated civilian areas, putting civilians at very high risk and suggesting a degree of intentionality,” she said. A quarter of all documented barrel bomb deaths were children.Difficulties of access and the nature of the impact meant the number of deaths caused by wide-area explosives was likely to be an underestimate, said the report’s authors. The study did not include deaths caused indirectly by war, such as increased disease or medical shortages, or fatalities among those who had been detained or had disappeared.Guhu-Sapir said the international community had to share responsibility for the deaths: “They have to face the consequences that the bombing deaths have much more impact on civilians and an increasing proportion of children. This is against the laws of war.”Based on the provinces VDC staff were able to enter, up to late 2012 the greatest number of civilian deaths occurred in Homs. Thereafter, the highest figures were in Aleppo and Damascus, which accounted for 25% of all deaths as well as the highest number of children killed by shelling. Aleppo saw 40% of child deaths by airstrikes.Data from government controlled areas, which are unsafe for VDC staff to enter, was not included in the study.The US-led coalition battling Islamic State has claimed its strikes in Syria and Iraq have killed 800 civilians since the campaign began in 2014, far fewer than those documented by monitoring and human rights groups. The Syrian Network for Human Rights has put the total number of children killed in the Syrian war from March 2011 to November 2017 at 26,446. Drawing on a network of sources as well as survivor accounts, the UK-based organisation estimates that 81% died in attacks by Syrian government forces. Russian forces were calculated to be behind 5.8% of child deaths, with armed opposition factions accounting for 3.5%, extremist Islamist groups 3%, and international coalition forces 2.7%.Airwars, the monitoring group, estimated US-led coalition air and artillery strikes are likely to have killed between 828 and 1,062 children since September 2014. Topics Conflict and arms Children Syria news

20:07 | 01/15/18 | NR | CC Trump pushes back: 'No, I'm not a racist'; Towns in the Northeast are under invasion from ice jams Continue Reading

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro looked to the world of digital currency to circumvent U.S.-led financial sanctions, announcing on Sunday the launch of the “petro” backed by oil reserves to shore up a collapsed economy. The leftist leader offered few specifics about the currency launch or how the struggling OPEC member would pull off such a feat, but he declared to cheers that “the 21st century has arrived!” “Venezuela will create a cryptocurrency,” backed by oil, gas, gold and diamond reserves, Maduro said in his regular Sunday televised broadcast, a five-hour showcase of Christmas songs and dancing. The petro, he said, would help Venezuela “advance in issues of monetary sovereignty, to make financial transactions and overcome the financial blockade.” Opposition leaders derided the announcement, which they said needed congressional approval, and some cast doubt on whether the digital currency would ever see the light of day in the midst of turmoil. The real currency, the bolivar, is in freefall, and the country is sorely lacking in basic needs like food and medicine. Still, the announcement highlights how sanctions enacted this year by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration are hurting Venezuela’s ability to move money through international banks. Washington has levied sanctions against Venezuelan officials, PDVSA executives and the country’s debt issuance. Sources say compliance departments are scrutinizing transactions linked to Venezuela, which has slowed some bond payments and complicated certain oil exports. Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro speaks during his weekly radio and TV broadcast "Los Domingos con Maduro" (The Sundays with Maduro) in Caracas, Venezuela, December 3, 2017. Miraflores Palace/Handout via REUTERSMaduro’s pivot away from the U.S. dollar comes after the recent spectacular rise of bitcoin, which has been fueled by signs that the digital currency is slowly gaining traction in the mainstream investment world. The announcement bewildered some followers of cryptocurrencies, which typically are not backed by any government or central banks. Ironically, Venezuela’s currency controls in recent years have spurred a bitcoin fad among tech-savvy Venezuelans looking to bypass controls to obtain dollars or make internet purchases. Maduro’s government has a poor track record in monetary policy. Currency controls and excessive money printing have led to a 57 percent depreciation of the bolivar against the dollar in the last month alone on the widely used black market. That has dragged down the monthly minimum wage to a mere $4.30. For the millions of Venezuelans plunged into poverty and struggling to eat three meals a day, Maduro’s announcement is unlikely to bring any immediate relief. Economists and opposition leaders say Maduro, a former bus driver and union leader, has recklessly refused to overhaul Venezuela’s controls and stem the economic meltdown. He could now be seeking to pay bondholders and foreign creditors in the currency amid a plan to restructure the country’s major debt burden, opposition leaders said, but the plan is likely to flop. Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro speaks during his weekly radio and TV broadcast "Los Domingos con Maduro" (The Sundays with Maduro) in Caracas, Venezuela, December 3, 2017. Miraflores Palace/Handout via REUTERS“It’s Maduro being a clown. This has no credibility,” opposition lawmaker and economist Angel Alvarado told Reuters. “I see no future in this,” added fellow opposition legislator Jose Guerra. Maduro says he is trying to combat a Washington-backed conspiracy to sabotage his government and end socialism in Latin America. On Sunday he said Venezuela was facing a financial “world war.” Writing by Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Mary MillikenOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The Hindu festival of Holi is under way in India. The two-day celebration signifies the victory of good over evil and marks the end of winter and the arrival of spring. Its origins can be found in Hindu mythology, while the use of colour is tied to stories about Lord Krishna

Police in India have reopened the case of a 10-year-old girl after forensic tests revealed that her baby's DNA samples did not match those of her uncle who is charged with raping her.After the Supreme Court denied her permission to abort, she gave birth to a baby girl last month. The 10-year-old was not aware of her pregnancy. She was told her bulge was because she had a stone in her stomach.She alleges she was raped several times in the past seven months by the uncle.The accused, who is in his 40s, was arrested and is being tried in a special court dealing with crimes against children. He is in prison and has made no statement so far. The BBC's Geeta Pandey in Delhi says the result of the DNA test has now led to questions over whether the girl was abused by others.The girl's father had earlier told the BBC that the accused had not denied the charges against him. Police said the uncle had admitted to the allegations, our correspondent reports."So far no-one had thought of any other possibility. The girl had testified to the court on video conferencing and in her statement, she had very clearly named the uncle and revealed facts about her abuse," an official involved with the investigation told the BBC on Wednesday. The girl's mother has reportedly told the investigators that they do not suspect anyone else, so the case has taken a very strange turn, the official added.On Tuesday, police and counsellors visited the family again to speak to the 10-year-old. A senior police official told BBC Punjabi that they would ask for a re-check of the forensic tests to ensure there had been no error in the DNA report. The pregnant child caught in a media storm No abortion for 10-year-old rape victim Her pregnancy was discovered in mid-July when she complained of stomach ache and her parents took her to hospital.A local court in Chandigarh turned down the abortion plea on the grounds that she was too far into her pregnancy after a doctors' panel advised that termination of the pregnancy would be "too risky". Later, the Supreme Court also refused to allow an abortion for her on similar grounds.As her family refused to have anything to do with the newborn, the baby is in the care of child welfare personnel and will be put up for adoption.The landmark case dominated global headlines for weeks, with officials saying they had never heard of a mother so young giving birth in an Indian hospital.Indian law does not allow terminations after 20 weeks unless doctors certify that the mother's life is in danger.But in recent years, the courts have received several petitions, many from child rape survivors, seeking to terminate pregnancies after 20 weeks. In most cases, these pregnancies are discovered late because the children themselves are not aware of their condition.Last Friday, a 13-year-old girl who was 32 weeks pregnant gave birth to a baby boy after the court allowed her to terminate her pregnancy. The infant died two days later.In May, a similar case was reported from the northern state of Haryana where a 10-year-old, allegedly raped by her stepfather, was allowed to abort. She was about 20 weeks pregnant, doctors said.None of the girls can be named for legal reasons. A child under 16 is raped every 155 minutes, a child under 10 every 13 hours More than 10,000 children were raped in 2015 240 million women living in India were married before they turned 18 53.22% of children who participated in a government study reported some form of sexual abuse 50% of abusers are known to the child or are "persons in trust and care-givers" Sources: Indian government, Unicef

最近，腾讯互动娱乐研发部前沿技术中心和腾讯研究院发布了一份《2017 Q2 VR 行业全景热度观察》报告。与一些第三方研究机构关注的 VR 市场规模金额不同，这份报告重点从四个方面分析了 VR 行业的热度评估，其中包括政策层面、产业链层面、技术层面和用户层面。雷锋网将这份报告内容整理如下。整体上来看，以总分十分为准，VR 行业全景热度综合评分为 6.9，超过 5 ，其中用户层面占比为 35%，产业链、技术和政策层面分别占比为 25%、25% 和 15%。首先，政策层面上，北京各部门自 1 月起到 6 月分别发布各类文件，支持 VR 产业的发展，包括《关于促进移动互联网健康有序发展的意见》、《虚拟现实头 戴现实设备通用规范联盟标准》等。同时各省市如青岛、上海、江西、福州、深圳等地也提供了相应的扶持政策。同时，报告中还特别指出一项 VR 应用（内容）分发服务提供者责任。基于 VR 设备，应用（内容）提供者为用户提供应用软件或视频内容，应用（内容）分发服务提供者则为他们提供应用（内容）的分发服务，类似手机“应用商店”。当应用（内容）提供者侵权时，应用（内容）分发服务提供者会面临平台责任问题。产业链层面，国内布局 VR 产业的上市公司达到 52 家。下游厂商最具代表性的是暴风集团，2017 年第一季度暴风魔镜的销量约 60 万台，同比增长 229%，依然保持国内领先地位。但在获客成本下降 94% 的同时，公司 4.48 亿营业收入中营业成本占到了 4.10 亿，同比增长 297.99%，2014 年第一季度的股东净利润为 4.5 万元，到了 2017 年第一季度的股东净利润已经成了负数。而上游厂商中具有代表性的歌尔声学，其 2017 年第一季度的研发资本投入达到 3.79 亿，占收入的 8.36%，但电声器件与电子配件的收入水平同比增长 56.30% 和 118.79%。根据 Google Patents 公布的数据显示，2016 年美国专利局 VR 专利申请前五的公司有微软、谷歌、Magic Leap、Oculus 和三星。微软 VR 专利申请占专利总数的 5.50%，位居第一。2016 年中国专利局 VR 专利申请量前五的公司为盟云移网络科技股份 有限公司、乐视致新电子科技（天津）有限公司、乐视控股（北京）有限公司、北京小鸟看看、深圳多哚，其中盟云移软的 VR 专利申请占总专利数的 7.10%，位居第一。从 2007 年到 2016 年全球 VR 相关专利申请曲线图中，我们可以看到，美国的 VR 专利申请在 2013 年达到一个小高峰，随后呈下降趋势，而中国的 VR 相关专利申请自 2015 年开始超过美国，到 2016 年出现较大的差距。根据百度指数，截止 2017 年 7 月，VR 在国内的热度较为稳定，环比几无变化。这也暗示“资本寒冬”已经完全触底，正积蓄能量进入恢复进程。与日趋稳定的 VR 相比，无人机、3D 打印和智能家居等其他新技术不断走低，而人工智能则波动剧烈。谷歌趋势与百度指数相仿，Gear VR 的热度下滑，硬件降低促销使 Oculus 出现较大的增长趋势。不管是国内贴吧，还是国外 Reddit，用户参与VR 话题的讨论活跃度持续增加。可见，大众对 VR 还是有不小的关注度。最后一项是平台数据。这里给出了 Steam、Oculus Home、Pornhub（VR 专区视频） 和 PlayStation VR 四个平台的数据情况。Steam 平台毫无疑问拥有的 VR 游戏总数最多，截止 2017 年 7 月，数量已经达到 1797 款，其次是成人网站 Pornhub 的 VR 专区视频总数，也达到了 1212 个。总体来说，各平台上的 VR 内容呈持续线性增长趋势，特别是 Pornhub 平台 VR 视频的增长，可见色情 VR 的潜力所在。通过对整个报告的分析，雷锋网发现，无论是用户对 VR 的关注度，还是 VR 内容的数量，都呈增长趋势，VR 行业之后的发展还是蛮值得期待的。雷锋网(公众号：雷锋网)也将继续带来最新的报道。雷锋网原创文章，未经授权禁止转载。详情见转载须知。

Stephen Elliott, a writer and film-maker who claims his life was ruined after his name appeared on the “Shitty Media Men” list that circulated online last year, is now making moves to identify the spreadsheet’s anonymous contributors. In a libel suit filed Wednesday against Moira Donegan, the crowd-sourced spreadsheet’s creator, Elliott and his attorney, Andrew Miltenberg, claimed they could legally unveil the currently unnamed “Jane Doe” defendants – and expose those who added, edited, or shared the list.Miltenberg is a high-profile sexual assault attorney and has represented hundreds of accused men, many of them college students dealing with Title IX claims. He told the Guardian he believed this suit had important implications, especially because of how soon it comes after the Kavanaugh hearings. “I think it became very relevant – more so than ever – in light of what we as a nation watched unfold over the past weeks,” he said.“I am very much a guy who thinks you have to stand up and be counted,” he added. “I think everything should be fair and I think this list is not fair.”Created as a Google spreadsheet last October, the list was made to empower women to share their stories and warn others. In an essay for the Cut, Donegan said it was active online for a mere 12 hours before she took it down amid concerns that the claims could not be contained. In that time, the list traveled rapidly and dozens of names were listed next to reports of harassment, rape, assault, and other misconduct. Elliott, who says he was listed by several contributors, was accused of rape and sexual harassment. At this point, aside from Donegan, who came forward as the list’s creator in January, none of its contributors have been named.Along with seeking $1.5m in damages for his client, Miltenberg says revealing the identities of the list’s contributors is an important part of the suit. “We may uncover that there were a lot of people who were part of this and we may uncover that it was only one or two,” he said. “But I think that everyone who takes part in something like this has to be held accountable.”According to Daphne Keller, a director at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford’s school of law, outing those anonymous defendants might be the only way Miltenberg can get the case heard. It’s likely that Google – which was not named in the suit – and Donegan as the document’s creator will be immunized by federal statute and could get the case dismissed, Keller said.“The other defendants are the people who actually posted the content about this individual plaintiff and they could very well be liable,” she said. “But then there is the question of whether the plaintiff can find out who they are. IP addresses can be roughly correlated to a person or a machine but not in a way that is reliable, where you know for sure who it was.”It could be difficult for Miltenberg to get the info he is after. In a statement on Friday, Google stated unequivocally that it will not comply, writing: “We will oppose any attempt by Mr. Elliot to obtain information about this document from us.”Even if he is able to subpoena it, as he said he plans to do, Google may well have already deleted the data. As first reported by the Daily Beast, Google’s policy page states that deleted data is removed from its servers. At most, it keeps encrypted backup storage for six months, to assist in case of accidental deletions.Miltenberg says, however, that he may not need to rely on Google for the information and instead plans to consult a forensic IT professional to make the determination. “It is a big part of the suit,” he said, “and I certainly hope it’s not gone. I am confident that one way or another a good forensic IT person will be able to tell us what we need to know about where these posts and the Google Doc emanated from, who made additions to it, who sent it where, who editorialized it – where the information came from and where it went to.”According to Don Vilfer, a former FBI agent and non-practicing attorney who heads the computer forensics division of the Vand Group, a company that specializes in obtaining and extracting data, it could be possible through forensics to confirm who accessed the deleted sheet without help from Google – but it would be hard without knowing where to start.The documents, he explained, leave a footprint on users’ devices. But anyone investigating would need to know whose devices to check. “If you suspected certain people and you had enough to warrant getting a subpoena for those person’s devices you could find the evidence on their computers, that would show they had accessed, downloaded, and worked on the spreadsheet,” he explained.Still, he added: “It is hard to remain anonymous in anything that people do involving the internet or data in general. It is possible that some or most of those contributors could be identified through forensic efforts, particularly in a lawsuit.”For now, Donegan is still the only defendant who has been named, and she has yet to make a public comment. A GoFundMe created on her behalf has raised more than $94,000. The writer Lauren Hough, who created the page to support Donegan, wrote that extra proceeds will be donated to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (Rainn). “I needed to do something,” she wrote in the page’s description. I know a lot of you feel the same. More than anything, I want Moira to see the army she has behind her.” Topics US press and publishing #MeToo movement Newspapers & magazines Google news

Late-night hosts on Tuesday addressed the White House’s defence of Donald Trump’s “treason” claim, and Donald Trump Jr’s response to critics who say his father is racist.“According to sources at the White House, Donald Trump’s lawyers are telling him to refuse an interview with Robert Mueller,” said Stephen Colbert, going on to quote a New York Times report that read “because the president, who has a history of making false statements and contradicting himself, could be charged with lying to investigators”.“Yes, it is a crack legal analysis from the law firm of No, Shit and Sherlock,” the host quipped, before making chicken noises at Trump to encourage him to sit down with Mueller.“Robert Mueller is not Trump’s only problem,” Colbert continued. “A lot of people have called Trump a racist, but only because of what he says and does. The charge has upset presidential son and man who KYs his scalp, Donald Trump Jr.”Colbert then showed footage from Trump Jr’s interview with the Daily Caller, in which he responded to charges of racism against his father by saying: “I know him, I’ve seen him my whole life, all the rappers, all the this.”“All the this? That’s as much as you know about black people?” Colbert responded. “In black history month, we celebrate all the achievements of African Americans, from all the rappers to all the this.”The host then showed another clip from the interview, where Trump Jr touts his father’s photos with black celebrities like Jesse Jackson and the Rev Al Sharpton.“Classic defense,” the host concluded. “How could I be racist? I have pictures with black people.”Trevor Noah of Comedy Central discussed how the White House responded to the fallout from one of Trump’s off-the-cuff remarks at a speech in Cincinnati.“Yesterday at a speech in Ohio, Trump took a moment to complain about the Democrats who didn’t clap for him during the State of the Union,” Noah said, showing a clip of Trump saying that “someone called it treasonous” before adding, “Yeah, I guess, why not?” “I’m still shocked that the president really will just repeat anything some random in a crowd shouts at him,” Noah joked. “Like, treason is not usually prosecuted in a call-and-response fashion. I wonder if that’s how we should get Trump to support better causes. We just go to his rallies and yell things out. ‘Ooh, Trump, Black Lives Matter!’” “Now, for some reason, people with a hard-on for democracy didn’t like the president casually accusing his political opponents of treason,” the host went on. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, at the podium on Monday, said “the president was clearly joking with his comments, but what isn’t a joke is that Democrats refuse to celebrate the accomplishments of last year that have helped all Americans.”“You guys, lighten up, the president was just joking about treason,” Noah said. “Just like when he was joking about Obama helping Isis, or when he joked about how the Russians should hack Hillary’s emails or, my favorite joke, when he said police should rough up people in custody.”Finally, Seth Meyers ran through a list of headlines involving Trump this week, including continued negotiations over immigration reform.“President Trump yesterday praised the Republican tax bill on Twitter, saying ‘America is once again open for business,” Meyers began. “The rest of the world said, ‘Cool, can we speak to your manager?’”Meyers went on: “According to reports, President Trump will release his $1.5tn infrastructure plan on Monday. Apparently, he wants to take the weekend to practice saying infrastructure.”Meyers then briefly discussed the negotiations over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (Daca), which Trump terminated last fall.Meyers said: “White House chief of staff John Kelly said today that some undocumented immigrants who are eligible for the Daca immigration program were ‘too lazy to get off their asses and sign up’.“‘You tell ’em, John,’ said his boss, between cheeseburger naps,” Meyers joked. Topics Late-night TV roundup Trevor Noah Stephen Colbert Donald Trump Donald Trump Jr Robert Mueller US television blogposts

Criminal investigations of Trump World and the 2016 presidential campaign continue unabated. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have placed the president’s inaugural committee and the Trump Organization in their crosshairs. News is rife with talk of subpoenas and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act – or Rico.Next month, Paul Manafort, Trump’s one-time campaign manager, is scheduled to be sentenced and Michael Cohen, Trump’s former foul-mouthed fixer, will begin a three-year prison term. So this is what “modern presidential” looks like: Donald J Trump meets Goodfellas.The Threat, Andrew McCabe’s memoir, is subtitled How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump. As he writes, “The FBI has always been the nemesis of criminals. Today the FBI is under attack by the president of the United States.”McCabe’s disdain is born in part of a real-life grudge. A career FBI agent, a lifelong Republican married to a Democrat, he oversaw the FBI inquiries into Hillary Clinton’s emails and Russian election interference. Frequently targeted by Trump for his wife’s failed bid for a seat in the Virginia legislature, in March 2018 McCabe was fired, less than two days before he was slated to retire, by Jeff Sessions, then attorney general, on a recommendation from the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR).According to Sessions, McCabe “made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor” during an OPR review of the FBI and justice department’s handling of an investigation into the Clinton Foundation, a charge repeatedly denied by McCabe. The FBI director, Christopher Wray, stated that the firing was not political but was done “by the book”. Suffice to say, many remain unconvinced.These days, Sessions too is out of a job but it is McCabe who has a book. It is definitely worth the read. The Threat is not just another exercise in score-settling, although there is plenty of that.McCabe paints a portrait of Trump as a mob boss, an observation in sync with Bloomberg’s Josh Green in The Devil’s Bargain and James Comey, the fired FBI director, in A Higher Loyalty. McCabe, however, goes further.Everyone catches it, not only Trump and his minions. The Threat contrasts the independence of the FBI and justice department under Trump and Barack Obama, with McCabe saying “Obama probably came closest to [the] ideal. The current administration is … like nothing we’ve ever seen before.”Pulling no punches, he takes to task Loretta Lynch, Obama’s second attorney general, for her refusal to recuse from the Clinton email investigation while attempting to maintain a show of being above it all. As McCabe sees it, Lynch and Sally Yates, then deputy attorney general, wrongly viewed “the investigation of Hillary Clinton … likely nominee of the Democratic party, who was being supported by the president of the United States, to whom they owed their jobs … as a case they could handle without prejudice”.According to McCabe, Lynch and Yates “made a feckless compromise”. Specifically, “they designated career professionals in the National Security Division as decision-makers in this case but didn’t unambiguously commit to abide by those people’s decisions”. It was, he writes, “the worst possible choice afforded by the situation”.It didn’t end there. There is Lynch’s meeting with Bill Clinton at the Phoenix airport and again McCabe does not mince words: “The tarmac meeting was a horrible lapse in judgment by Loretta Lynch. She should have recused herself … she did not – she made things worse.”With the advantage of hindsight, McCabe is critical of the decision taken by Comey, his boss at the time, to publicly announce the FBI’s recommendation that no charges should be pursued against Hillary Clinton. In “retrospect”, as McCabe frames it, “perhaps I would have said to Comey, ‘Don’t do it. Let’s be the normal Bob Mueller, say-nothing FBI of old.’”Instead, Mueller is special counsel, Trump roams the White House and America is treated to a nonstop crime drama. Yet, somehow, we are not entertained.As reported by the Guardian, McCabe breaks new ground by writing that the president “ordered” Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, “to write the memo justifying” the firing of Comey. Unmentioned is the spate of denials that emanated from the White House at the time concerning Trump’s involvement.Sean Spicer and Sarah Sanders, presidential spokespeople, publicly absolved their boss. As Sanders put it, Trump “did not direct” Rosenstein “to write the context of the memo, he asked him to make the comments that he already made into writing”.While McCabe’s version of events may be questioned – Rosenstein has not challenged it – it is also worth remembering ex-White House staffer Cliff Sims’s take on Sanders, namely she “didn’t press as hard as she could have for the rock-bottom truth”. As for Spicer, his post-inaugural exercise in fan fiction earned him acid-dripping mockery on SNL.McCabe fails to clear up the mystery surrounding reports attributed to his memos that in May 2017, in the aftermath of Trump firing Comey, Rosenstein weighed secretly recording the president and raised the possibility of invoking the 25th amendment in order to remove him. Likewise, McCabe does not address reports that he and Rosenstein each urged the other to step down in the aftermath of Rosenstein appointing Mueller as special counsel.Instead, McCabe takes a shot at Rosenstein for his wish for advice on the appointment of a special counsel. In McCabe’s telling, Rosenstein said: “The one person I would like to talk about this situation is Jim Comey.” McCabe returned to his office, he writes, in a state approximating “shock”.The Threat should leave the reader worried that our cold civil war is taking its toll on the US and its institutions. As Republicans regularly bash law enforcement, Democrats embrace the intelligence community. We are staring at a world turned upside down. Topics FBI Donald Trump Trump administration Trump-Russia investigation James Comey Hillary Clinton US elections 2016 reviews

Dating apps like Tinder and Woo may be trendy, but when it gets serious, it is India’s matrimonial websites that still rule the roost.As a testament to that, one of India’s oldest matchmaking portals is all set to launch its initial public offering (IPO) on Indian bourses today (Sept. 11). The 17-year-old Matrimony.com, which operates websites such as BharatMatrimony.com, CommunityMatrimony.com, and EliteMatrimony.com, is looking to raise Rs500 crore ($78.3 million). These proceeds will be used to repay bank overdrafts, buy land to build a new office in Chennai, and help strengthen its presence in the $40 billion to 50 billion Indian wedding market (paywall).Chennai-based Matrimony.com is the country’s largest matchmaking company by number of visitors, according to media analytics firm comScore. It caters to over 3.2 million users across its network of over 300 websites. This is the company’s second attempt at going public, after it scrapped its earlier plans in December 2016, citing unfavourable market conditions. Coming over a year after e-commerce firm Infibeam’s April 2016 outing, Matrimony.com’s IPO would be among the few by Indian internet firms.And while dating apps are gaining traction, Matrimony.com’s founder and CEO Murugavel Janakiraman believes arranged marriages are still the norm, meaning there’s still room for his business to grow, especially as internet access expands.“India is a strong matrimony market,” Janakiraman said, adding that new-age dating apps are likely to struggle to make substantial profits, given that it’s not easy to get women to use them. Matrimony.com, on the other hand, is among the handful of profitable Indian web ventures.The idea for Matrimony.com emerged in the 1990s, when Janakiraman was working with AT&T-Lucent in the US. He had set up a community website to connect with other Indians, and noticed that it was the matrimony section that attracted the most traffic. So, in 2000, he decided to turn this into a bigger business, and returned to Chennai to launch Matrimony.com.For decades, Indian arranged marriages have mainly been organised through classified advertisements, offline marriage bureaus and brokers, or word-of-mouth referrals of family and friends. The first online matchmaking portal, Shaadi.com, was established in 1996, marking a new era for the business.To set his company apart, Janakiraman decided to focus on making it easy for users to search for partners from a wide range of religions, castes, languages, and other categories. He began with Tamilmatrimony.com and Telugumatrimony.com, and gradually expanded into over 300 specialised portals, including ones for divorced people, mangliks (people with a certain astrological condition that is believed to be unfavourable for marriage), doctors, and defence personnel. It also runs a portal for wealthy Indians called Elitematrimony.com, besides separate websites for Arabs, Sri Lankans, Bangladeshis, and Pakistanis.Now, Janakiraman said, online matchmaking portals account for around 10% of the market in India. And while competitors, including Shaadi.com and Jeevansaathi.com (launched in 2004), also provide community-based searches, they don’t match Matrimony.com’s range.“We have been tracking data since 2006, and since then, we have had 26 million users of our sites,” Janakiraman said. Bharatmatrimony.com’s mobile app, launched in 2011, has had five million downloads.Matrimony.com saw a 22% increase in the number of profiles listed on its website last year, and Janikaraman expects this number to surge as internet access becomes more affordable. It makes money largely through subscriptions—you can create a profile on the site for free but need to be a paid member to contact someone you are interested in. Membership for Bharatmatrimony costs Rs4,200 for three months, while that on EliteMatrimony costs Rs50,000 for the same period and goes up to Rs10 lakh for two years.Last year, Matrimony.com earned Rs292 crore in revenue and made a profit of Rs44 crore, Janakiraman told Quartz. It has so far raised Rs99 crore from Bessemer Venture Partners, Mayfield, and JP Morgan Asset Management. These venture capital investors will sell some of their stakes through the IPO, the company said in its red herring prospectus.Now, Matrimony.com is hoping to go beyond matchmaking, leveraging its brand to offer wedding-related services, too.Earlier this year, it began offering services like wedding photography, videography, and catering in Tamil Nadu, and plans to launch the same in other states once the model is perfected, Janakiraman said.But the company’s previous attempt at diversification didn’t go so well. In 2012, Matrimony.com launched Tambulya, an online return-gift store, but failing to turn profitable and running into regulatory issues, it shut shop. Janakiraman’s dating app, Matchify, didn’t have many takers either and was discontinued within a year of its launch in 2015.

Last fall, Snapchat reorganized itself as Snap, and unveiled Spectacles, a pair of sunglasses that could record and share videos to Snapchat.Snap built hype and demand for Spectacles, its first foray into hardware, with sporadic sales and marketing that made the glasses hard to find and highly coveted. At first, the only way to get the $130 glasses was to camp out at vending machines that seemed to pop up randomly across the US (including Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the Grand Canyon). In November, Snap opened a pop-up store in New York, which for weeks was stuffed with people trying to buy a pair. At the peak of their hype, Spectacles sold for nearly $1,000 on eBay.Then the company made Spectacles more widely available. It put them on sale online (shipping is free) as well as at college bookstores. And demand dried up.A report in The Information (paywall) today (Oct. 23) suggests Snap is sitting on hundreds of thousands of unsold pairs of Spectacles. Earlier this month, CEO Evan Spiegel said the company had sold over 150,000 pairs of the glasses, exceeding internal goals for first-year sales. Today’s report suggests the company had expected—or at least prepared—for far higher sales.Many more well-established technology firms have struggled to jump from software to hardware. Facebook’s first attempt at a smartphone was a failure, as was Amazon’s. In September, Snap laid off about one dozen employees in its hardware research division, Business Insider reported. The company had been in talks to buy drone manufacturer Zero Zero Robotics (which makes the exceedingly loud Hover drone), to create a follow-up product to Spectacles, but The Information also reported that this deal has fallen through.Snap hasn’t revealed how much it’s spent on research and development for Spectacles, or any other potential hardware ideas, but Spiegel’s sales figure of 150,000 would mean the company has generated around $19.5 million in revenue from the glasses. The company Snap acquired to develop its glasses, Vergence Labs, typically charged $300 to $500 for the models it sold, which could suggest Snap sold those Spectacles at a loss. Snap declined to comment on its Spectacles stockpile.The company will report its third-quarter earnings Nov. 7. After going public in March, Snap’s stock hasn’t traded above its $17 IPO price since early July, as the company has struggled to show any signs of profitability.

By Nov. 20, 2017 2:52 pm ET MOSCOW—Russia is preparing to host the leaders of Turkey and Iran this week for a summit on the future of Syria, further cementing President Vladimir Putin’s position as a Middle East power broker. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are scheduled to meet with Mr. Putin on Wednesday in Russia’s Black Sea resort city of Sochi. The conference is something of a victory lap for the Russian president, who intervened in Syria in the fall of 2015, providing air power to prop up the regime of... To Read the Full Story Subscribe Sign In

Russia has denied its warplanes carried out air strikes on a village in eastern Syria on Sunday, which activists say killed dozens of civilians.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 53 people died in al-Shafah, while website DeirEzzor24 put the toll at 25. Both said Russian aircraft, which are supporting Syrian pro-government forces battling so-called Islamic State (IS) in the area, were behind the attack. But on Monday Russia's defence ministry insisted it did not bomb al-Shafah."The Russian Aerospace Forces' strikes in Syria target areas outside population centres, and only facilities of the international terrorist groups," a statement said, according to Russian news agencies. How much success has Russia had in Syria? Why is there a war in Syria? "The reports by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is based in Great Britain, about the alleged strikes by the Russian Aerospace Forces' planes on the village of al-Shafah are yet another fake," it added.An earlier statement had announced that six Russian Tu-22M3 long-range bombers struck IS command posts and militant positions in Deir al-Zour province on Sunday.DeirEzzor24, an activist-run news website, reported that Sunday's strikes had targeted a residential compound where several displaced families were staying.Most of the 25 people killed were women and children, it said, adding that the death toll might rise because many victims were still trapped under collapsed buildings.The Syrian Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria, also said residential buildings were hit and that 21 children were among the dead.Al-Shafah is located on the eastern bank of the River Euphrates, about 110km (68 miles) south of the city of Deir al-Zour and 14km from the border with Iraq.It is just to the north of the town of Albu Kamal, which Syrian soldiers and pro-government militiamen captured earlier this month with Russian air support.In a separate development on Monday, the Syrian Observatory said another 18 people had been killed by government air strikes and shellfire in rebel-held Eastern Ghouta outside Damascus.More than 100 people are now believed to have been killed in the past two weeks as a result of the Syrian military's bombardment of the besieged area, despite it being one of four "de-escalation zones" set up earlier this year by the government's allies, Russia and Iran, together with rebel backer Turkey.UN humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland said earlier this month that an estimated 400,000 civilians living in Eastern Ghouta faced "complete catastrophe" because aid deliveries were being blocked by the government and that hundreds of people needed urgent medical evacuation.Meanwhile, UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura said the Syrian government had not yet confirmed it would attend peace talks in Geneva due to start on Tuesday.The Syrian newspaper al-Watan reported that the government delegation had postponed its departure because the opposition had reiterated its demand that President Bashar al-Assad should stand down.The newly appointed head of the opposition's negotiating committee, Yahya al-Aridi, said on Sunday: "The Assad regime must not be allowed to play for time while people are besieged and bombed."Mr Assad, whose forces have inflicted a series of defeats on rebel forces over the past two years, told Russian President Vladimir Putin last week that he was "ready for dialogue with all those who want to come up with a political settlement".Mr de Mistura said he expected the government to participate in light of Mr Assad's comment, and stressed that he would "not accept any preconditions by any party".

On Thursday, Judge Bonadio said there was enough evidence to charge Mrs. Kirchner and her former allies with treason, because they had sought “impunity for the Iranian nationals accused of the attack on the AMIA headquarters and to normalize relations between the two states,” referring to the community center, the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina.The judge also approved similar charges against several associates of Mrs. Kirchner: Héctor Timerman, the former foreign minister; Carlos Zannini, who was essentially Mrs. Kirchner’s chief of staff; and a community activist, Luis D’Elía, among others.Some Argentine Jews, who overwhelmingly believe that Mr. Nisman was murdered, expressed support for Judge Bonadio’s decision.“Thee detentions show that Nisman’s complaint had solid elements,” said Ariel Cohen Sabban, the head of the Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas, a group that is close to AMIA and was critical in getting the case reopened. “It is a revindication of Nisman’s work.”Mrs. Kirchner will not be the first member of her administration to face efforts to remove her immunity. Julio De Vido, a former planning minister, was stripped of the immunity he enjoys as a member of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Parliament, and turned himself in to authorities on graft charges in October.Iran has long denied any involvement in the AMIA bombing. Mr. Nisman, before his death, had filed a criminal complaint accusing Mrs. Kirchner and members of her government of trying to shield Iranian officials suspected of playing a role in the attack as part of a deal that would supply Iranian oil to Argentina. Judge Bonadio’s indictment on Thursday is based on that complaint.

After a series of high-profile rape cases, India launched a national register of sex offenders for the first time in September. Those convicted of sex crimes—including rape and sexual harassment—will now be added to a database, access to which will be given to law enforcement agencies, but not the public.The aim of the new register is to reduce the number of crimes committed against women in India. But discouraging offences through a register is just part of the answer to improving women’s safety. Cultural attitudes toward sexual assault also need to change, as these can affect whether crimes are reported.Evidence from other countries with similar sex offender registers is mixed, finding that they don’t seem to have an effect on re-offending rates—though they may stop sex crimes from being committed by people not already on the register. Researchers suggest that one of the reasons for this is the potential cost to offenders of being added to the register, such as difficulty finding jobs and housing.My colleague Tara Marshall and I conducted a recent study comparing attitudes to sexual assault in Britain and India in an attempt to understand the underlying issues affecting these reporting rates.In India, victims of sexual assault are often blamed for the crimes committed against them. One of the most high-profile rape cases in India happened in December 2012 when Jyoti Singh, who came to be known as “India’s Daughter,” was gang raped and murdered in Delhi. While there were movements across the country in support of Singh, much of the national conversation about the case blamed her for having been out late at night, and even for fighting back against her attackers.Such views are a form of “rape myth acceptance”—a set of beliefs which tend to blame victims of sexual assault for having been assaulted. They include suggesting that if women wear revealing clothes or drink alcohol then they deserve what happens to them. Research suggests that one reason offences are often not reported is because of these victim-blaming beliefs. This is true across the world—but especially in India.For our study, we asked groups of men and women from both India and Britain to look at a series of scales and rate their agreement with statements from one (strongly disagree) to seven (strongly agree). We asked them about their attitudes towards women through questions such as: “A woman should not expect to have quite the same freedom of action as a man.” We asked about their attitudes to sexism, such as: “Most women interpret innocent remarks or acts as being sexist.” And whether they agreed with rape myth acceptance, via questions such as: “Women often claim rape to protect their reputations.”Through this, we created scores for their attitudes toward women, rape myth acceptance, and sexism. Of the 112 Indian and 117 British adults we collected data from, Indian participants’ scores were almost twice as high as those of the British participants, meaning that they were more accepting of rape myths and traditional roles.We found a clear link between traditional attitudes toward women—such as that they should be concerned with their childbearing duties while men go to work—and higher scores on the rape myth acceptance scale, among both men and women.Other studies in India have also shown that strong beliefs about the appropriate role for women—for example, that they should not work but rather care for the home and family—seem to increase acceptance of victim-blaming beliefs.We also asked participants about their acceptance of other views, termed “hostile sexism”—the belief that women ought to be punished if they do not stick to traditional roles. The Indian participants in our study tended to score on average 60% higher on our measure of hostile sexism than British participants. And it was hostile sexism which we found was linked to rape myth acceptance in our scale, suggesting that those who believe women ought to be punished for stepping outside of traditional roles are also more likely to believe women are to blame for being raped.Our findings suggest that interventions that target underlying factors such as traditional societal attitudes towards women could lead to less acceptance of rape myths and hopefully more reporting of sexual assaults.India’s introduction of a sex offenders register is a clear step toward improving women’s safety and it should start to discourage individuals from offending and help decrease the stigma surrounding sexual assault. But a lot more needs to be done to address cultural beliefs about sexual assault to enable more women to feel able to come forward and report crimes when they occur.Suzanne Hill, PhD candidate in cross-cultural psychology, Brunel University London.Inline image by Nilanjana Roy on Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. We welcome your comments at ideas.india@qz.com.

Felix Sater, a Moscow-born businessman now at the centre of the Trump-Russia affair, says he lives by a simple code: “Screw me once, shame on you; screw me twice, shame on me for letting it happen.”As the Trump presidency finds itself increasingly hemmed in by an investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, and as key protagonists hire their own lawyers and reportedly make their own arrangements with prosecutors, they are words likely to become ever more relevant to those caught in the whirlpool.Sater – a former Trump associate who the president has in recent years had trouble recalling – repeated the motto more than once in exchanges with the Guardian, while asking for fair coverage of his past. He insists it has sustained him through a convoluted and colourful life that led him from Moscow to Wall Street to prison to the freewheeling world of international real estate deals, secret arrangements with US law enforcement and intelligence agencies – and ultimately, to Trump Tower.Whatever the truth of Donald Trump’s relationship with the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin, Sater is likely to end up being part of the story. He surfaced this week in leaked emails that he sent in 2015 to Trump’s lawyer, claiming he could engineer Putin’s support for a Trump Tower in Moscow and thus, somehow, a victory in the US presidential election.“Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” Sater said, according to one of the emails, leaked to the New York Times. “I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”The real estate deal never happened, but Sater’s predictions of a world-changing political triumph proved to be prescient. Quite what that triumph had to do with Putin is now under scrutiny by a special counsel in Washington and a handful of congressional committees.Sater’s links to Trump’s circle can be traced back to not long after he came to the US as a child. His father, Mikhail Sheferovsky (who changed the family name after arriving in New York) became a local crime boss in Brighton Beach and Sater grew up on that side of Brooklyn, where he got to know another teenager in the neighbourhood, Michael Cohen, a Long Island boy who would go on to become Trump’s personal lawyer and vice-president of the Trump Organization.Three decades later, it was Cohen whom Sater contacted when he thought he could win Putin’s backing for a Moscow real estate deal and Trump’s presidential run.Sater first came directly into Trump’s orbit when he teamed up with one of his neighbours, another Soviet-born striver, Tevfik Arif, a Kazakh developer who set up the Bayrock real estate firm in 2001 with offices in Trump Tower. Sater rose to become managing director, and Bayrock went into partnership with Trump to build the Trump Soho hotel.Trump, Arif and Sater were masters of ceremonies at the official opening in Manhattan in September 2007, and pictures of the event show them basking together in the glow of the publicity.Sater was forced out of the limelight not long after, when details of his criminal record appeared. His first career as a stockbroker had come to a sudden end when he was jailed for slashing a man with the stem of a shattered margarita glass.When he emerged from a year of prison (“the worst time in my life”, he told Talking Points Memo), he got involved in a mob-run stock exchange scam, persuading gullible customers to buy worthless shares.He was caught again but this time he did not go to jail. Instead, he and two other defendants struck a deal with the US government, offering his services in return for leniency. The extent of what he did for government agencies is not exactly clear.According to a book co-authored by another defendant in the case, Salvatore Lauria, Sater used his contacts in the Russian underworld to help the CIA buy back Stinger missiles that had fallen into the hands of Afghan jihadists, although the buy-back scheme failed. Sater has claimed that his secret work in Russia for the CIA started before the stock fraud was exposed.However, according to an unsealed transcript of a New York hearing in 2011 in which the justice department sought to keep Sater’s deal secret, Sater’s cooperation went much further than counter-terrorism.The government’s lawyer Todd Kaminsky told a court that Sater, referred to throughout the proceedings as John Doe, had provided cooperation that “was of an extraordinary depth and breadth, almost unseen, at least in this United States attorney’s office”.Kaminsky added that “unlike some cooperators who cooperate within one type of organized crime family or over one type of crime, Mr Doe’s cooperation runs a gamut that is seldom seen”.“It involves violent organizations such as al-Qaida, it involves foreign governments, it involves Russian organized crime. And, most particularly, it involves various families of La Cosa Nostra. By that, specifically, I mean an individual on the ruling board of the Genovese crime family, a captain in the Bonanno crime family, a soldier in the Gambino crime family, the list goes on and on.”Kaminsky continued: “Now, at the time of the sealing in 1998 and through the beginning of 2008, Mr Doe worked in a proactive capacity actively aiding grand jury investigations that involved surreptitious recordings of individuals as well as other undercover actions.”Sater disputed this version of events, however, insisting all of his work for the government was abroad.“I have never been a mafia informant ever in my life,” he told the Guardian in an email. “I was a cooperating witness on my 1998 Wall street case as where 15 other defendants [sic], that case basically ended in 2000. My work with various US government agencies both before the 1998 case as well as for over [two] decades after was in the area of National Security and did not include any mafia members of any kind.”Sater added: “That work went into high gear after September 11, when America was attacked.”His government service ended in 2009, when he was finally sentenced for the securities fraud charges more than a decade earlier, paying a $25,000 fine and spending no time in jail. By now, however, his criminal past had been exposed. But there was still one Manhattan high-roller willing to make use of Sater’s particular skills.Sater told New York magazine: “I stopped up to say hello to Donald, and he says, ‘You gotta come here.’”The Trump Organization has insisted that Sater was never an employee but he worked out of Trump Tower and carried a now infamous business card identifying him as “senior advisor” to Trump.“Donald wanted me to bring deals to him. Because he saw how many I put on the table at Bayrock,” Sater said. “I know you’re gonna be able to spin it as ‘He doesn’t care and will do business even with gangsters,’” Sater told New York magazine. “Wouldn’t it also show extreme flexibility, the ability not to hold a grudge, the ability to think outside the box, and it’s okay to be enemies one day and friends the next?”What Sater did for Trump from that time on is part of the puzzle that entwines Trump with Moscow. What is known is that he was involved in the abortive attempt to secure Trump a slice of the Moscow real estate market and that he took part in an effort, also involving Michael Cohen, to promote a Moscow-backed peace plan in Ukraine that would have left Crimea in Russian hands on a long-term lease, and potentially to the removal of the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko. The plan was delivered to the White House before being leaked and ditched amid international outrage.Among the many unknowns is the question of whether he returned to his collaboration with the FBI. The Financial Times has reported he is cooperating with an international investigation into Kazakh money-laundering, but he has not said whether he is talking to Robert Mueller, the special counsel looking into possible Trump-Kremlin collusion.As Sater predicted in an email to the Guardian: “[T]here are many additional stories that will be coming out about me in the future, much more timely and important than 20 year old stock cases.” Topics Trump administration US politics Donald Trump Russia news

There are few penalties awarded in the dying stages of a crucial game that are met without any degree of controversy among football fans.But when one of the teams playing is in the midst of a civil war and the referee officiating comes from a country supporting one side of that conflict, the potential for controversy is heightened further still.Syria's hopes of qualifying for the World Cup in Russia in 2018 are still intact after drawing with Australia.The World Cup qualifying playoff staged in Malaysia - as Syria are unable to play matches at home - finished 1-1 after a contentious 85th-minute penalty allowed Syrian striker Omar Al Somah to equalise. Syria: Football on the frontline Syria war: Fighting worst since battle for Aleppo - ICRC Fans of the Syrian football team were understandably overjoyed."This is possibly one of the matches I loved most. Professional playing and Syrian people cheering from their hearts," one fan commented on Facebook.But Iranian referee Alireza Faghani's late decision infuriated several Australia players and has generated significant discussion online."It was evident to everyone it wasn't a penalty," Australian forward Robbie Kruse told the Sydney Morning Herald. His 40th-minute finish from close range had earlier handed Australia the advantage in the two-legged tie. Jessikka Aro: How pro-Russian trolls tried to destroy me Monopoly Man upstages Equifax Senate hearing Taj Mahal left out of an Indian tourism booklet Some social media users in Iran were quick to link the decision with their country's support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime.There is no evidence of any deliberate wrongdoing on the part of the referee or anyone else."Faghani is the real defender of shrines," one social media user commented, attributing to the referee a title given by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps to its fighters in Syria."With the penalty he called for Syria, Faghani will get a medal of honour from the Supreme Leader," another tweeted.Australian football writer Paul Williams was unconvinced."The penalty was soft no doubt," he tweeted. "But are we really questioning the integrity of one of the best refs in Asia?"Many Syrian fans agreed."It was the best game in Syria's history," one posted on Facebook. "The Australian team is complaining for nothing. The game should have ended with three goals for Syria."Syria's fans will be hoping they can upset the odds when the second leg kicks off in Sydney, Australia on Tuesday 10 October. The winners will advance to a final playoff match with the chance to win a place at next year's World Cup finals.Additional reporting by BBC Monitoring

Actress Rose McGowan has told the BBC Harvey Weinstein has tried to contact her since she went public with her allegations that he raped her.She said she had received "texts, things like that", adding: "I've got no idea how he got my number."Ms McGowan also said the alleged assault by Mr Weinstein had been "worse than I wrote about".She is one of several women to accuse Mr Weinstein of rape. He denies all allegations of non-consensual sex.When asked whether she had been approached directly by the Hollywood producer, she told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme: "Texts, things like that - I've got no idea how he got my number, but he also had former [Israeli intelligence agency] Mossad agents involved in my life so getting my personal phone number wasn't that hard." How the Harvey Weinstein scandal unfolded Harvey Weinstein's accusers When asked how recently there had been contact, she replied: "A month ago - somebody that worked with him, represented him, I don't know, on his behalf - I shook, it was like a bullet once again."It was basically just kind of this person is reaching out. And I don't even understand what the point was. I can't understand to what end. The cat's out of the bag."Asked what the purpose of the message had been, she said it had been suggesting that Mr Weinstein had wanted to get in touch or to talk to her. She said: "It could have been some random person, but that would be a long shot."Ms McGowan also said the response had been "nothing short of cataclysmic" since she had become one of the most prominent figures in the #MeToo movement after sharing her allegations. "In some ways I feel it's an honour to almost be a receptacle for so many people's pain and voices, people who want to identify and reach out and say, 'Me too,'" she said."I had hoped that by showing people that if you can cut off the head of power, that you can achieve an awful lot."Ms McGowan claims she was raped by Mr Weinstein in a hotel room during a business meeting at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival.She told Victoria Derbyshire: "The reality of what happened in that hotel room is even worse than I wrote about [in her book]. I just thought, 'This is enough to really get my point across.'"There's a strange thing that happens with becoming a survivor, that you feel like you are almost trapped in this weird relationship with this person that you can't get away from. "It shocks me that I was touched by this person, and so many, I was just a thing to be eaten." She added the alleged incident "did a lot of damage, it still does" as his name and face was everywhere. "There's something really strange about having this abstract envy over a victim who doesn't need to see her perpetrator again," she said. Mr Weinstein's representatives have been contacted for a response to Ms McGowan's claims he has tried to contact her.In relation to her rape allegations, they said: "Mr Weinstein has vigorously denied Ms McGowan's claims and an investigation of those claims and of Ms McGowan suggests in our judgment, that she has taken a consensual act of intimacy between her and Mr Weinstein and falsely attempted to turn it into an act of sexual assault."On claims that Ms McGowan had been spied on by an intelligence agency made up of former Mossad spies called Black Cube, the company said it applied high moral standards to its work and operated in full compliance with all applicable laws and regulations.Watch the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme on weekdays between 09:00 and 11:00 on BBC Two and the BBC News channel.

The brutal rape of a 23-year-old student on a bus in Delhi shocked the world. The victim, who became known as Nirbhaya (‘fearless’), succumbed to her injuries two weeks later, but not before giving testimonies against her attackers. Her death provoked outrage and protests across India as people demanded dramatic improvements to women’s rights. But five years on, has anything really changed? We revisit the city to ask women what they think

The drive to build more toilets in India has been given an unusual twist with a Rajasthan judge granting a woman a divorce because her husband’s failure to provide her with one amounted to cruelty.Sangeeta Mali, 23, told the court in Bhilwara district that her husband, Chotu Lal Mali, had agreed to build her a toilet when they married in 2011, but never did. Mali told the judge that she was ashamed of having to defecate in the fields around her home in Pur village with no privacy or comfort.“He kept saying he would build it but it was just talk. In the end, he refused point blank. My in-laws also refused. Every day was agony – waiting for it to get dark so that there was no one around who could see me, forcing me to hold on even though my bladder was bursting. I couldn’t live with the stress any more,” she told the Guardian.For the past two years, Mali has had to use the toilet at her mother’s home in another village. At the end of 2015, with no toilet in sight, she decided to file for divorce. Mali’s story has made the front pages of Indian newspapers. The judgment given on Friday by Justice Rajendra Kumar Sharma has been widely quoted for its strongly worded views. Sharma said the fact that women have to defecate in the open amounted to “mental torture” and was a disgrace in the 21st century. “Has it ever pained us that our mothers and sisters have to go to defecate in the open? Women in villages have to wait for dark to venture out in order to relieve [themselves] and as a result have to bear … physical pain,” he said.“It is an irony that people who spend a lot of money on alcohol, tobacco and mobile phones don’t have toilets in their homes.” Mali’s lawyer, Rajesh Sharma, said he was pleased with the coverage of the case. “We are very backward compared with other countries. If we want our women to live with dignity, and if we want our country to be clean and great again, we have to build toilets not just for Mali but all Indian women, in villages or cities,” he said.Mali is not the first woman to take action over sanitation concerns. In March, a bride in Telangana state, in southern India, refused to go ahead with her marriage until her fiance had built a toilet. And in April last year, a bride in Kanpur called off her wedding at the last minute for the same reason.Debates about sanitation have reached the big screen, with Mali’s case echoing the storyline of a just-released Bollywood film called Toilet: A Love Story. The film has a woman threatening to leave her husband unless he builds a toilet. To win back her love and respect, he embarks on a campaign to change his village’s lackadaisical policy on latrines.“I just can’t fathom how we’ve been able to launch rockets to Mars and the moon but still not been able to build toilets to end open defecation across the country,” the star of the film, Akshay Kumar, told the Times of India this month.Back living with her widowed mother, who manages by selling vegetables, Mali will not be seeing Kumar’s film. But she said: “I’m glad they have made it. We need to talk about this every day, everywhere, until we get toilets. The government must move faster. Women are desperate.” Topics Sanitation Women's rights and gender equality India South and Central Asia Inequality and development Women's rights and gender equality news