COLU @ CONCEPTS

LONDON (AP) — Britain is wrestling with a volatile nexus of crime, race and religion, after 18 people were convicted of sexually abusing women and girls as young as 15. One woman and 17 men were convicted of or admitted to charges including rape, supplying drugs and inciting prostitution in a series of trials that ended this week at Newcastle Crown Court in northeast England. As in several other recent cases, the convicted men come largely from South Asian Muslim backgrounds, while their victims are mostly white. Some claim the crimes were long ignored by authorities afraid they would be called racist or fearful the allegations might inflame ethnic tensions. But Helen Bailey, an expert on sexual exploitation, said Thursday that focusing on the perpetrators’ ethnic background risked missing other patterns of abuse. Source: www.apnews.com 

Kenya opposition claims election system hacked   01:37 (CNN) Former US Secretary of State John Kerry said he was confident in the "overall integrity" of the Kenyan elections and praised the country's election commission for its transparency and diligence on Thursday. The 73-year-old politician is leading the Carter Center's mission of election observers, who released their preliminary observations a day after opposition leader Raila Odinga claimed early electronic election results had been compromised by hackers. Kenya's Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) have a week to declare final results but it appears incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta, who leads the Jubilee Alliance, is on track for an outright win, which requires one vote more than 50%. "The IEBC has put in place and is thus far following a detailed process of paper ballot counting and security which, if followed through to the final steps, can give eac...

The US believes several State Department employees at the US embassy in Havana were subjected to an "acoustic attack" using sonic devices that left at least two with such serious health problems they needed to be brought back to the US for treatment, several senior State Department officials told CNN. One official said the employees could have suffered permanent hearing loss as a result. The employees affected were not at the same place at the same time, but suffered a variety of physical symptoms since late 2016 which resembled concussions. The State Department raised the incidents with the Cuban government over the course of several months and sent medical personnel to Havana, but have not been able to determine exactly what happened. "It can be quite serious," one official told CNN. "We have worked with the Cubans to try and find out what is going on. They insist they don't know, but it has been very worrying and troublesome." The FB...

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka’s foreign minister resigned on Thursday after being accused of possessing a luxury apartment paid for by a businessman investigated for shady treasury bond transactions. Ravi Karunanayake, who was the finance minister at the time the deals took place, denied the allegation but told Parliament that he is resigning from the Cabinet to “set an example” to others and protect the government. He said he would continue as a lawmaker. He has previously said the apartment deal was handled by his family and he was unaware of its contents or parties involved.  Although Karunanayake has not been charged, opposition lawmakers had been calling for his resignation over conflict of interest and ethical issues. In his statement to Parliament, Karunanayake said there was an attempt to destabilize the government using the allegations against him. “I will not allow such a coup to topple our government. I resign with pride ... setting an exam...

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — The leaders of Poland’s Jewish community have written to the country’s most powerful politician, urging him to denounce rising anti-Semitism which they say is leaving them on edge. Anna Chipczynska, the head of Warsaw’s Jewish community, told The Associated Press on Thursday the letter to Jaroslaw Kaczynski was sent last week. She said the community hadn’t yet received a reply. In the letter she and Leslaw Piszewski, who oversees all Jewish communities in Poland, said they fear that Poland is becoming less secure for Jews. They noted “an intensification of anti-Semitic attitudes in Poland, a brutality of language and behavior, some of which are directed against our community.” Kaczynski is the leader of the nationalist ruling Law and Justice party. The party spokeswoman wasn’t immediately available for comment. Source: www.apnews.com 

LONDON (AP) — Pope Francis has ordered a Belgian Catholic charity to stop offering euthanasia in its psychiatric hospitals. In May, the Brothers of Charity group announced it would allow doctors to perform euthanasia at its 15 psychiatric hospitals in Belgium, one of only two countries — along with the Netherlands — where doctors are legally allowed to kill people with mental health problems, at their request. To qualify, people must be in a state of “unbearable suffering” and at least three doctors, including one psychiatrist, must be consulted. The charity said in a statement that euthanasia would only be performed if there were “no reasonable treatment alternatives” and that such requests would be considered with “the greatest caution.” “We respect the freedom of doctors to carry out euthanasia or not,” the group said, noting that this freedom was “guaranteed by law.” The Vatican press office said this week that the pope had asked the Belgians not to perform euthanasi...

MOSCOW (AP) — A historical film about the last Russian czar’s affair with a ballerina has been cleared for release, the Culture Ministry said Thursday, despite passionate calls for its ban. “Matilda,” which describes Nicholas II’s relationship with Matilda Kshesinskaya has drawn virulent criticism from some Orthodox believers and hard-line nationalists, who see it as blasphemy against the emperor, glorified as a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church. Russian lawmaker Natalya Poklonskaya, who previously had served as the chief regional prosecutor in Crimea following its 2014 annexation by Moscow, spearheaded the campaign for banning the film. She even asked the Prosecutor General’s office to carry out an inquiry into “Matilda,” which is set to be released on the centennial of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. The lavish production, filmed in historic imperial palaces and featuring sumptuous costumes, loosely follows the story of Nicholas II’s infatuation with Kshesinskaya that be...

MINNETONKA, Minn. (AP) — The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has found reasonable cause that agribusiness giant Cargill violated the civil rights of Somali-American Muslim employees by refusing to allow them to pray during their breaks at a meatpacking plant in Colorado. About 150 employees walked off the job at the Cargill’s Fort Morgan plant in December 2015 after supervisors told them they would no longer be allowed to pray during their breaks. The company then fired the workers for violating attendance policies. The company based in Minnetonka, Minnesota, maintained the prayer break issue was a misunderstanding between supervisors and workers. The Star Tribune reports Cargill and the employees now have a chance to settle the matter confidentially. A discrimination lawsuit is possible if a settlement cannot be reached. Source: www.apnews.com 

It’s been 70 years since India and Pakistan were carved from the former British Empire as independent nations, a process that triggered one of the largest human migrations in history. Overnight, Hindu and Muslim neighbors became fearful of one another. Mob violence broke out, leaving hundreds of thousands dead. Some 12 million people fled their homes — including Hindus afraid they would not be welcome in the newly declared Islamic state of Pakistan, and Muslims worried they’d suffer at the hands of India’s Hindu majority. Here, survivors from both India and Pakistan recall living through that uneasy time, and consider what it meant to the future of the two countries. ___ ONE EVENING EVERYTHING CHANGED On Aug. 14, 1947, the day of Pakistan’s independence, groups of Muslims marched through villages wearing the country’s newly created flags on their shoulders. For some, it was a time of celebration. For Sohinder Nath Chopra and his Hindu family, it was time to flee. A M...

NEW DELHI (AP) — When the British ended two centuries of colonial rule on the Indian subcontinent in August 1947, they left a jigsaw legacy — the vast country of India flanked on either side by a newly created Pakistan split in two parts. Excitement over independence was quickly overshadowed by some of the worst bloodletting the world has ever seen, leaving up to 1 million people dead as gangs of Hindus and Muslims slaughtered each other. A Gurkha watches over Indians beneath the Red Fort celebrating the first anniversary of India’s independence, Aug.15,1948. (AP Photo/Max Desfor) As the 70th anniversary of India-Pakistan Partition comes up next week, relations between the two nations are as broken as ever. In some ways, their violent birth pangs dictated their future course through suspicion and animosity. Here’s a look at the troubled legacy of Partition: ___ FAMILIES DIVIDED Muslim refugees take shelter in Purana Qila, the old fort, Sept. 17, 1947. (AP Pho...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration’s own actions are triggering double-digit premium increases on individual health insurance policies purchased by many consumers, a nonpartisan study has found. The analysis released Thursday by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that mixed signals from President Donald Trump have created uncertainty “far outside the norm,” leading insurers to seek higher premium increases for 2018 than would otherwise have been the case. The report comes with Republicans in Congress unable to deliver on their promise to repeal and replace the Obama-era Affordable Care Act. Trump, meanwhile, insists lawmakers try again. The president says “Obamacare” is collapsing, but he’s also threatened to give it a shove by stopping billions of dollars in payments to insurers. Some leading Republicans are considering fallback measures to stabilize markets. Researchers from the Kaiser foundation looked at proposed premiums for a benchmark silver plan across major ...