An Indian man who was shot and wounded at a bar in suburban Kansas City last week says he wished the killing of his best friend during the attack had all been a dream, but that the incident, apparently fueled by racism, “doesn’t reflect the true spirit of Kansas”.Alok Madasani, 32, addressed a crowd of hundreds during a vigil on Sunday night at the Ball Conference Center in Olathe. He described the fatal shooting last Wednesday of his friend and co-worker, Srinivas Kuchibhotla, as “a senseless crime,” the Kansas City Star reported.

“The main reason why I am here is that’s what my best friend, Srinivas, would have done,” Madasani said. “He would have been here for me.” Another patron, Ian Grillot, 24, was also wounded when he tried to intervene in the shooting at Austins Bar and Grill in Olathe. A bullet went through Grillot’s right hand and into his chest, just missing a major artery but fracturing a vertebra in his neck.(the guardian)…[+]

Iraqi forces seized control of much of Mosul airport on Thursday morning, marking an important moment in a push to recapture the city from Islamic State.

The advance into the airport, to the southwest of Mosul, will allow troops to use the large, sprawling area to launch operations into the fortified western suburbs, where several thousand of Isis’s most seasoned fighters have prepared defences.Backed by US jets and drones, national police forces were first into the airfield and had secured most of the runway by noon local time. Militants had laid mines throughout the disused complex and were clashing heavily with advancing forces.A spokesman for the Iraqi counter-terrorism forces, Sabah al-Numan, said: “Our forces started a major operation this morning to storm the Ghazlani airport base and I can confirm that it is only a matter of time before we control the whole area.”(The guardian)…[+]

Teenage demonstrators have blockaded more than a dozen high schools in and around Paris, mounting makeshift barricades and setting fire to cars, scooters and rubbish bins in protest at the alleged rape by police of a young black man.

Authorities said nine students were arrested in the suburb of Clichy after about 100 youths set two cars and a motorbike alight, threw stones and shattered a shop window amid continuing anger at police violence and the suspected assault on Théo L, who was allegedly raped with a police truncheon earlier this month.

Eight more people were arrested after a larger crowd of protesting students, some hooded and carrying flares, gathered at Place de la Nation in the east of the French capital in an unauthorised demonstration organised on social media.(the guardian)…[+]

When Donald Trump first spoke at the largest annual gathering of conservative grassroots activists, he was loudly booed for taking a shot at one of their heroes.

The room erupted in jeers when Trump, in 2011, told the conservative political action conference (CPAC) that prominent libertarian Ron Paul “can not get elected”, partly because Congress was in recess. Six years later, Trump will appear as the Republican president at the conservative confab that mixes policy, paranoia and partying in equal measures.

By day, it draws college students and ardent activists to speeches from elected officials and panels on topics such as If Heaven Has a Gate, a Wall and Extreme Vetting, Why Can’t America?(The guardian)…[+]

Juan Pablo García was six years old when he left home and joined a street gang. Over the next 14 years he sold marijuana for a local kingpin, became the leader of his own gang and developed a heavy cocaine addiction. Like thousands of others who hustle on the dusty streets of Monterrey, Mexico’s third-biggest city, he was the product of a society that has spawned a seemingly endless cycle of violent crime.

“I grew up in a very poor neighbourhood. We didn’t even have water or basic services,” García recalls. “After my dad abandoned us I wanted to earn money on the streets to support my mum, but I ended up getting involved with gangs.”

It was only when he “found God” at the age of 20 that García managed to break the cycle, although it took another three months of homeopathy and abstinence to kick his cocaine habit. Now 42, he is helping others to escape gang life and return to school or find formal employment opportunities.(The guardian)…[+]

Mexico will host its first high-profile Donald Trump envoys this week with at least one consolation: the proposed border wall is itself walled in, for now, by Washington bureaucracy.  Federal agencies are reportedly resisting the idea and Congress is hesitant to fund it, leaving the president fighting a lonely battle to keep his campaign promise.

Instead of a 2,000-mile “big, beautiful wall”, Trump may emerge from Washington’s policy labyrinth with a fence covering a few hundred miles. “He hasn’t made any progress other than to say ‘we’re going to do it’,” said Seth Stodder, a former senior homeland security official who focused on border security under the Obama and Bush administrations. “They’re pretty far away. I don’t think they’ve made much progress.”(the guardian)…[+]

Tony Blair has denied that a Labour government paid compensation to the former Guantánamo Bay detainee who went on to blow himself up in Iraq, in a strongly worded statement in which he accused the Daily Mail of hypocritical coverage over the Manchester-born jihadi’s death. The former prime minister said that compensation – thought to amount to £1m – was paid out under the Conservative-led coalition government in 2010 – and criticised the tabloid for blaming him and Labour instead. “He was not paid compensation by my government,” Blair said. “The compensation was agreed in 2010 by the Conservative government.”On Wednesday morning, the Daily Mail front-page story was the death of Jamal al-Harith – who changed his name from Ronald Fiddler after converting to Islam in his 20s but most recently went by the nom de guerre Abu-Zakariya al-Britani – in which Blair’s government was singled out for “intense lobbying” for his release.(The guardian)…[+]

A British Muslim schoolteacher travelling to New York last week as a member of a school party from south Wales was denied entry to the United States.

Juhel Miah and a group of children and other teachers were about to take off from Iceland on 16 February on their way to the US when he was removed from the plane at Reykjavik. The previous week, on the 10 February, a US appeals court had upheld a decision to suspend Donald Trump’s executive order that temporarily banned entry to the country from seven Muslim-majority countries.The trip proceeded as planned but pupils and colleagues from Llangatwg comprehensive in Aberdulais were left shocked and distressed after the maths teacher, who had valid visa documentation, was escorted from the aircraft by security personnel. Miah, 25, from Swansea, said he was made to feel like a criminal and was so worried by what happened to him that he did not eat or sleep for two days. He told Wales Online that shortly before the flight was due to leave he was approached by an official who told him he could not board the plane.(The guardian)…[+]

A plane that crashed into a shopping centre near Essendon airport in Melbourne, killing four US tourists and their Australian pilot, had a “catastrophic engine failure” shortly after takeoff, police have said.

The twin-engine aircraft, which issued a mayday shortly after leaving the airport about 9am on Tuesday, was taking the tourists to King Island to play golf. “The pilot unfortunately attempted to return to Essendon but has crashed into the DFO at Essendon Fields,” a police assistant commissioner, Stephen Leane, told reporters.

Leane said none of the staff at Direct Factory Outlets – which was not yet open to the public – had been injured. “Looking at the fireball, it is incredibly lucky that no one was at the back of those stores or in the car park of the stores that no one was even hurt,” he said.(the guardian)…[+]

BARBADOS  – The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) and the United Nations Office for Projects Services (UNOPS) have signed an agreement that provides a framework to improve cooperation between the two entities. The signing took place at the Bank’s headquarters in Barbados on February 7, 2017.

The agreement allows CDB to utilize expertise from UNOPS in the execution of specific projects, which the Bank is funding, so that the most effective outcomes for the Bank’s 19 borrowing member countries are achieved. Under the agreement, UNOPS may be called upon to provide technical advice, financial management, project management and technical infrastructure support for projects financed by CDB, where external support is needed.  There is also expected to be an exchange of knowledge and information relating to sustainable actions and social responsibility.

Vice-President Operations at CDB, Patricia McKenzie signed on behalf of the Bank.

Giuseppe Mancinelli, Deputy Regional Director, Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, signed on behalf of UNOPS…[+]