Icetruck

Trump makes light of his Twitter account going dark briefly

WATCH Trump takes on Clinton, DNC

President Donald Trump is making light of his Twitter account going dark for a few minutes this week.

Twitter has reported that a customer support worker was on his or her last day on the job and "inadvertently" deactivated Trump's account briefly Thursday evening.

Early Friday, Trump tweeted: "My Twitter account was taken down for 11 minutes by a rogue employee. I guess the word must finally be getting out-and having an impact."

Trump also tweeted that "everybody" is asking why the Justice Department isn't investigating "all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary & the Dems."

• Star

Source – abcnews.go.com

By Sunita Patel-Carstairs, Business Reporter

Apple has shrugged off concerns about production delays on the new iPhone X by reporting a 19% rise in profit to $10.7bn (£8.2bn).

Revenues were also up by 12% to $52.6bn (£40.2bn) in the fourth quarter ending 30 September – an increase of 12% during the same period last year.

Analysts on average were expecting total revenue of $50.7bn (£38.8bn).

The company's shares rose 4% in after-hours trading on Thursday to hit an all-time high – as its 10th anniversary iPhone X went on sale in the UK on Friday and in many Asian markets, with Apple chief executive Tim Cook reporting "very strong" orders.

At a cost of £999, it is Apple's most expensive handset with features including an edge-to-edge screen and a face ID unlocking system.

:: Has Apple gone too far with £999 iPhone X?

Apple also put out an upbeat forecast for the next quarter, predicting resurgent iPad and Mac sales, plus the release of iPhone X, would push up revenues to between $84bn (£64.2) and $87bn (£66.6bn).

Mr Cook said: "We're happy to report a very strong finish to a great fiscal 2017."

He added: "We're looking forward to a great holiday season."

The company is now worth about $868bn (£665bn), making it the world's most valuable publicly traded company.

"A trillion-dollar market cap may now be in Cook's sights in light of these results and guidance around iPhone X," said Daniel Ives, an analyst at GBH Insights.

It still remains to be seen whether Apple can meet demand for the iPhone X during the crucial festive season, with most analysts saying it will likely take it until next year or early spring to do so.

"Where the demand curve and supply curve are going to intersect, we do not know. It does not have a predecessor product," said Apple's chief financial officer Luca Maestri.

More stories

• Previous article Top QC airlifted into Monarch slots case
• Next article WhatsApp struck by 'worldwide outage'

Source – News.sky.com

The Latest: Stray fire from Syria wounds Israeli civilian

The Latest on developments in Syria whether government forces have liberated the eastern city of Deir el-Zour from the Islamic State group (all times local):

1:10 p.m.

Israel's military says a civilian was shot and wounded from stray fire from across the border amid "intense fighting" in neighboring Syria.

It says the Israeli civilian was lightly hurt on Friday from the Syrian side of the Golan Heights.

Israel has mostly stayed out of Syria's civil war that's raging near its northern frontier.But it has carried out a number of strikes in response to spillover fire.

It is also believed to have carried out airstrikes on suspected weapons convoys from Syria to its archenemy Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite militant group which has members fighting alongside Syrian government forces.

Israel captured the Golan from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and the two countries remain enemies.

———

12:40 p.m.

An Iraqi officer says troops battling the Islamic State group in Iraq's far west have reached the border with Syria as they fight IS near the militants near the border town of Qaim.

Maj. Bassam Fawaz with the federal police says that Iraqi forces reached the border on Friday morning as they continue to close in on the last remaining pocket of militant-held territory in Iraq's Anbar province.

The joint operations command says Iraqi forces began pushing into the western neighborhoods of Qaim and that Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi pledged the battle will be finished within days.

Qaim, located about 320 kilometers, or 200 miles, west of Baghdad lies along a border crossing with Syria in the Euphrates River Valley. It has been used by IS to ferry fighters and supplies between the two countries when the militants' territorial hold included nearly a third of both Iraqi and Syrian territory.

———

11:45 a.m.

Syria's state-run news agency says at least six people were killed and 21 were wounded in a suicide bombing that hit a government-held town in the southern province of Quneitra.

SANA says Friday's bombing targeted the outskirts of the town of Hadar in the northern countryside of Quneitra, near the Israel-occupied Golan Heights. It gave no further details.

Opposition activists reported that a suicide car bomb targeted a position of Syrian soldiers in that area amid clashes between government forces and rebels there.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll at seven and said 23 people were wounded. It also reported heavy clashes between the two sides in the area.

———

10 a.m.

Syrian state media say the army has liberated the eastern city of Deir el-Zour from the Islamic State group.

Friday's report says the military is now in full control of the long contested city.

Syrian government forces and their pro-government allies first broke the militant group's siege of their part of the city in September and have been advancing against IS positions since then.

Deir el-Zour had been divided into a government-held and an IS-held part for nearly three years.

The development is the latest significant defeat for IS as the militant group sees its self-proclaimed "caliphate" crumble and lose almost all urban strongholds.

The Syrian army and Kurdish-led forces backed by the U.S. are now racing to take the rest of the oil-rich eastern province.

• Star

Source – abcnews.go.com

Apple expects to have its most profitable sales quarter in history.
Source – abcnews.go.com

How about a vasectomy? Uganda wants more men to say yes

When Martin Owor, a father of six, told his wife he was considering having a vasectomy, she told him it was out of the question. How would they live as husband and wife after his surgical sterilization?

But after a long conversation about growing up poor, the Ugandan man went ahead with a procedure that remains widely unpopular in sub-Saharan Africa, where misunderstandings are high.

To spur development, this East African country that has been a regional leader in tackling health challenges like AIDS now hopes to lower population growth. The issue is widespread in Africa, which faces a population boom even as other parts of the world see dropping birth rates. Over half of the global population growth between now and 2050 will take place in Africa, the United Nations says.

Sub-Saharan Africa, with some of the world's most impoverished nations, will continue to be plagued by poverty unless governments reduce high fertility rates, development experts say.

Uganda has started recruiting "champion men" to speak publicly on television and elsewhere about vasectomies as a method of family planning. It has proven difficult.

Many men fear it leads to impotence. Some worry about being stigmatized. Others ask what might happen if, after a vasectomy, they lose all their children in some catastrophe.

"Many people think that when a man goes for a vasectomy he is not going to continue being a normal man," said Owor, who runs a grocery store in eastern Uganda. "But there is no problem. My wife is very happy."

Owor said he was compelled to have a vasectomy because he did not want his children to grow up hopelessly poor.

"My father had 12 children, so we never had a chance of having a quality education," Owor said. "I needed a number that I would try to manage."

Uganda's population has ballooned from 17 million in 1990 to more than 41 million in 2016. It one of nine African countries in the world's top 10 fastest-growing populations, according to U.N. figures.

Only 35 percent of married women in Uganda use modern methods of contraception, according to government statistics. Abortion is illegal in Uganda, except to save the mother's life.

Although Uganda's fertility rate dropped from 6.9 births per woman in 2001 to 5.4 today, officials say a desirable rate is four births per woman.

As "champion men" speak out, the government is working to increase male involvement in family planning as a way to meet that goal.

"We can't coerce them, because family planning is voluntary and is supposed to be based on human rights, and we want to keep on engaging them," said Placid Mihayo, an assistant government commissioner in charge of sexual and reproductive health.

Uganda's openness recalls its public campaigns against the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s, when many African countries, including Kenya and South Africa, did not fully acknowledge the crisis.

"Uganda has done extremely well," said Alain Sibenaler, the U.N. Population Fund representative in Uganda, whose office has been working closely with the government on family planning options. "The total fertility rate has dropped in a very short time."

Uganda remains one of the world's poorest countries, with a per capita income of $615, according to World Bank data. The situation is dire in rural areas, where health facilities often lack basic medicines and many children drop out of school.

Some warn that the country won't come close to meeting its ambitious development targets — achieving lower-middle-income status by 2040 — without wider use of birth control.

"If you produce 100 children and create only two jobs in that period, so where are the other 98 going to get jobs?" asked Sam Mwandara, project coordinator for Reproductive Health Uganda, a U.N.-supported group. "The population is expanding so fast in relation to land, jobs, education and health. So it's alarming."

Vasectomies are still a small part of Uganda's effort. Each month two or three of the procedures are performed at a clinic run by Reproductive Health Uganda in the capital, Kampala, said Dr. Kenneth Buyinza, an expert on reproductive health. The vasectomy costs about $13, which Buyinza said is affordable to most Ugandans. The price is $50 or more at some private facilities.

The organization also distributes millions of free condoms each year in a country where their use has become widespread.

"When it comes to the permanent methods of family planning we are still on the low side," Buyinza said of vasectomies, though the organization tries to spread the word that of all the modern family planning methods the procedure has the fewest side effects, if any.

"The uptake of vasectomy, much as it offers the best option in terms of lifetime birth control, it is still not yet easy to sell."

• Star

Source – abcnews.go.com

Luke Bryan on meeting 14-year-old who learned to pronounce the letter 'K' with the singer’s name

WATCH Luke Bryan meets fan who learned to pronounce letter 'K' to say his name

Fourteen-year-old Max Bird might be Luke Bryan’s biggest fan.

“His songs make me happy,” Max told ABC News. “All the time.”

ABC News

Max’s parents say he loves the country singer so much that they play Bryan’s music to motivate Max to do just about anything.

“We clean the house to Luke Bryan. We get dressed in the morning to Luke Bryan. [We] brush our teeth and get out the door to Luke Bryan, and [Max] takes a Luke CD every day on his bus to school,” Max’s father, Paul Bird, told ABC News.

'American Idol' judges to include Luke Bryan, Lionel Richie 88-year-old woman with terminal illness meets and flirts with Luke Bryan Luke Bryan opens up about 'What Makes You Country:' 'It doesn't matter where you're from'

Max, who lives with his parents and his brother Mitchell in Iowa, has trouble with his speech, so his mother, Jaimi Bird, and Sarah Sitzmann, who are both speech pathologists, work with Max to help him communicate better. Jaimi Bird says her son has apraxia of speech.

ABC News

“Many children have difficulties with certain speech sounds, and we work with them all the time as well,” Jaimi Bird told ABC News. “Apraxia of speech is a little bit more than that. It's a little more complicated in the sense that it's more a motor planning problem. And so that's why the [letters] ‘K’ and ‘G’ were so hard.”

“I help him say certain sounds,” Sitzmann told ABC News. “Pretty much after every single session, we always watch a Luke Bryan video. All I have to say is, ‘Max, what are we working for?’ And he’ll say, ‘Luke!’ So then I’ll say, 'OK! Let’s keep going.'”

One day while working with Sitzmann, Max was finally able to pronounce the sound of the letter “K,” which he wanted to accomplish so he could say, “Luke Bryan.”

“We’ve worked for over a year, and, so, I mean, I didn’t know if it would happen, and actually he got the ‘K’ on my last day working with him,” Sitzmann said.

ABC News

“I can’t even tell you how it made me and Paul feel when he got a sound! I mean, we’ve been working on it for so long!” Jaimi Bird said.

Sitzmann posted a video on social media of the session when Max successfully pronounced Bryan’s name, and the clip quickly became viewed by thousands of people, including a reporter from the Des Moines Register, who wrote about Max and his love for Bryan.

Luke Bryan said he was browsing through social media when he first came across Max’s story.

“When you think about — he’s used saying my name as one of his goals and motivation through life, it’s the highest form of flattery,” Bryan told ABC News.

Bryan and Max finally got to meet each other at Bryan’s concert in Boone, Iowa, on Sept. 30, 2017.

ABC News

“When I meet a kid like him, it always puts it into perspective. I think we can get in our daily routine,” Bryan said. “But when you meet somebody like Max and the other kids I’ve met, I mean, that’s when you’re like, alright, this is good stuff.”

Bryan asked Max to say his name, and the two did a quick duet of Max’s favorite song by Bryan, “Here’s to the Farmer.”

“We all have goals; everybody has challenges. Some peoples' are bigger than others’. Max has worked really hard,” Jaimi Bird said. “He has a lot to say, and sometimes, I think people don't get that; they don't see that he has so much knowledge and so much to give and share, because they can't understand him. Now, he's a little bit closer to being understood better.”

“I'm just glad I have the ability to be out there and hopefully putting smiles on people's faces and doing positive things,” said Bryan.

WATCH: "Living Every Day: Luke Bryan": A Robin Roberts special presentation, airing Monday, Nov. 6, at 10 ET/9 CT on ABC.

ABC News

• Star

Cuban foreign minister accuses US of lying about mysterious health attacks

WATCH Americans are warned against traveling to Cuba

After weeks of growing hostility between the U.S. and Cuba over "health attacks" on American personnel at the embassy in Havana, Cuba is firing back.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla not only blamed the U.S. for politicizing the attacks, but also categorically denied that any attacks have occurred in a press conference in Washington Thursday.

The State Department has said that 24 Americans have been affected by mysterious targeted attacks that cause a range of symptoms including permanent hearing loss, loss of balance and dizziness, cognitive issues, and, in some cases, from mild traumatic brain injury. The U.S. has blamed Cuba for not taking care of its diplomats, but not for the attack themselves.

Rodríguez has now mounted Cuba's loudest defense yet.

"I can categorically affirm that those that say there have been attacks … are deliberately lying," he said through a translator.

'Handful' of US citizens reported health attacks after visiting Cuba, State Dept. says US expels 15 Cuban diplomats from embassy in Washington

The foreign minister did not deny that American personnel may be experiencing symptoms and said his government is willing to continue the investigation to "find the truth." But so far, between the evidence that his government has collected and the significantly limited information it has received from the U.S., they do not believe the Trump administration.

"No attack has occurred. No deliberate action has taken place," he said. "If the U.S. government thinks otherwise, I invite it to present evidence."

The FBI and State Department's Diplomatic Security are investigating the incident. FBI teams have visited Cuba four times now, according to Rodríguez, who said they so far had "not presented any conclusion or any hypothesis as to what had happened or any specific incident."

Among the issues stumping investigators on both sides is what, exactly, is responsible for the symptoms and whether there is any sort of device capable of causing them. At first, American officials suspected there was a sonic device because personnel reported hearing screeching noises, but the U.S. has said there still is no known device or technology that has been identified as responsible.

The lack of a device has left Cuba suspicious, with Rodríguez saying today that no weapon or device could be the cause of all the reported symptoms. Cuba's preliminary investigation has concluded that "there is no evidence, no evidence whatsoever of the occurrence of the alleged incidents" or that the symptoms were even caused in Cuba.

"So far, I can confirm conclusively, those health problems cannot be the result of a single cause or single action," he said, and pointing to experts, claimed, "It is impossible to have a single cause explaining the diversity [of symptoms]."

Rodríguez urged the U.S. to share medical records and more specific details or convene Cuban and American doctors and investigators, so that his government can better understand the situation. One piece of evidence the U.S. has shared is the recording of the sound, Rodríguez said, but only altered versions — which "did not comply with international standards," he said. Beyond that, "the cooperation received from the United States in this case has been very limited," he said.

Instead, he accused the Trump administration of using the health problems of staffers "as a pretext as a political context" to create "significant setbacks" in Cuban-American relations.

The U.S. has withdrawn the majority of its embassy staff in Havana, leaving only emergency personnel. Because of that, it has indefinitely suspended visa services at the U.S. embassy for Cubans trying to travel to America. In return for what they call Cuba's failure to protect Americans, the U.S. expelled 22 Cuban diplomats from Washington. And the State Department issued a travel warning for Cuba, telling the American public they too could be victims of the mysterious attacks.

Rodríguez accused the U.S. government of hypocrisy, questioning why U.S. authorities requested "212 visas for relatives and friends of diplomats between January and October" or "made more than 250 pleasure trips outside Havana" if the country is so unsafe. ABC News reached out to the State Department for confirmation — and reaction to Rodríguez's other charges — but has not yet heard back.

Symptoms were first reported late last year, affecting American diplomats, intelligence officials and some family members. In early 2017, the State Department said, it realized that there was a pattern and that personnel were being targeted. Cuba said it was told of the incidents in February and has been investigating ever since — including by allowing the FBI to enter the once-Cold War enemy country.

State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert has said that the U.S. and Cuba are cooperating on the investigation, although they're not working together. But she has recently ramped up her tone about Cuba, too — saying Cuba may have more information than it's sharing with the U.S.

"In a small country like Cuba that has the type of regime and government it does, they tend to know things that are going on within its own borders," she said in October.

• Star

Source – abcnews.go.com

Five jailed over terror plot in Sydney

Four men and a teenager have been jailed in Australia over a plot to carry out a terror attack in Sydney.

The plan was foiled by police in New South Wales (NSW) in 2014.

The plot had included discussions about targeting an Australian Federal Police building in Sydney and a jail in nearby Lithgow, a court heard.

The ringleader, Sulayman Khalid, was described as a "devout terrorist" by a judge who sentenced him to a maximum of 22 years and six months in jail.

The Supreme Court of NSW heard that some of those involved in the plot had acquired weapons and ammunition.

Three of the accused – Khalid, 22, Jibryl Almaouie, 24, and a boy, 17, who cannot be named – had pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit a terrorist attack.

Two other men – Mohamed Almaouie, 22, and Farhad Said, 25 – had admitted a lesser charge of knowingly making a document likely to facilitate a terrorist act.

Justice Geoffrey Bellew said Khalid co-ordinated "many aspects" of the plot over a six-week period.

"He was corrupted by a dangerous, violent and perverted ideology, to which he unequivocally subscribed, which he wore as a badge of honour, but which has no place in any civilised society," Justice Geoffrey Bellew said on Friday.

The four others were given maximum jail sentences of between nine and 18 years.

Source – bbc.com

Syria says it liberated Deir el-Zour city from IS militants

The Syrian army announced on Friday it liberated the long-contested eastern city of Deir el-Zour from the Islamic State group — a largely symbolic victory in the military's bigger fight to capture the last remaining IS strongholds in the oil-rich province along the border with Iraq.

In a statement, the military said it was now in full control of the city, after a weeks-long campaign carried out with allied forces. It said army units were now removing booby traps and mines left behind by the extremist group in the city.

Deir el-Zour, on the west bank of the Euphrates River, had been divided into a government-held and an IS-held part for nearly three years.

Syrian government forces and their pro-government allies first broke the militant group's siege of their part of the city in September in a Russian-backed offensive, and have been advancing against IS positions since then. The city is the largest in eastern Syria and the capital of the province with the same name.

The development is the latest significant defeat for IS as the militant group sees its self-proclaimed "caliphate" crumble and lose almost all urban strongholds, including Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in northern Syria. It also comes as Iraqi forces and allied Shiite militiamen are chasing IS remnants inside the town of Qaim, on the Iraqi side of the border.

The Syrian army, backed by Russia and Iran, and Kurdish-led Syrian forces, backed by the United States, are now racing to take the rest of the oil-rich eastern province of Deir el-Zour, including the key town of Boukamal near the Iraqi border.

Moscow's military involvement in the Syrian war since 2015 has propped up President Bashar Assad's forces and turned the conflict in his favor, while Russian mediation earlier this year launched cease-fire talks in Astana, Kazakhstan. The talks, sponsored jointly with Iran and Turkey, have brokered local deals that have significantly reduced violence in the war-torn country.

"Army units, in cooperation with allied forces, liberated the city of Deir al-Zour completely from the Daesh terrorist organization," the military statement said, using the Arabic name for IS.

Footage posted on the website of the Syrian state news agency SANA shows the last moments of the fighting between the Syrian army and IS in Deir el-Zour, including shelling by Syrian tanks and plumes of smoke rising over the city's IS-held and mostly destroyed neighborhoods of Jamiayat and Jabiliyeh before they were liberated.

• Star

Source – abcnews.go.com

Bosses of the new Call of Duty say being truthful to the violence of WW2 honours those who fought.
Source – bbc.com