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276/2017 • 25, NOVEMBER 2017 WEEKEND ISSUE

DAILY NEWS IN ENGLISH

ʼNazi Grandmaʼ Holocaust denier may finally face jail A court in western Germany is considering the appeal of octogenarian Ursula Haverbeck, who has multiple convictions for Holocaust denial.

Haverbeck has been handed several jail terms, but has so far avoided prison. A German court was due to make a decision on Thursday in the appeal of an 88-year-old woman convicted for incitement to racial hatred on multiple occasions. Ursula Haverbeck challenged two verdicts handed down by a court in the western town of Detmold, after she denied that the genocide of Jews between 1941 and 1945 had taken place.

Russia vetoes last-ditch bid to save probe into gas attacks in Syria Russia used its veto twice in 24 hours to deny a new mandate to the UN team looking into chemical weapon attacks in Syria.

Moscow said it would not extend the mandate of the probe without fixing its "fundamental flaws."

Tensions were running high in the UN Security Council on Friday after Russia vetoed a lastditch motion by Japan to continue the UN-led investigation into chemical weapons use in Syria. The move comes only a day after Russiavetoed a separate US draft resolutionto extend the probe, and its own draft was in turn rejected by the US, UK, and France. Moscow has repeatedly criticized the findings of the UNbacked investigative body, dubbed Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) as biased and inaccurate. Last week, JIM released a report blaming the Syrian regime for the chemical attack which killed around 100 people in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in April. Russia rejected it as "invented" and insisted that the body needed to reform.

Angela Merkelʼs German coalition crisis greatly exaggerated Uncertainty as opportunity for democracy

There has been a lot of talk about German democracy in crisis. But the government keeps ticking along, and politicians across nearly the whole spectrum say the situation is hardly as dire as some are making it out to be.

Ousted Venezuelan opposition leader escapes house arrest, flees to Spain Ousted Caracas mayor Antonio Ledezma has likened his escape to a film. He plans to take the fight against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro abroad.

The ousted opposition mayor of Caracas arrived in Spain on Saturday after orchestrating a daring escape from house arrest in Venezuela. Antonio Ledezma landed in Madrid from Bogota, Colombia, where he arrived a day earlier after slipping across the border. He was greeted by his wife and two daughters who live in Spain.

Ledezma said he planned to organize resistance from abroad to President Nicolas Maduro, under whose rule

millions of Venezuelans have suffered from shortages of food and other basic supplies. "I am going to travel the world to spread the hope of all Venezuelans to escape this regime, this dictatorship," Ledezma said. The 62-year-old opposition figure was removed as mayor of Caracas and arrested in 2015 on allegations he sought to topple Maduro. He was later put under house arrest due to health issues. Ledezma was one of the opposition leaders who led protests against the government in 2014, which also resulted in the arrest of opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez.

He remains under house arrest.

Tennis star Maria Sharapova investigated for criminal conspiracy in India Maria Sharapova has been named as part of a broader Indian police investigation into alleged cheating and criminal conspiracy. The tennis star endorsed a luxury apartment project that was never built.

"Ballet by Maria Sharapova" is the name of a project of luxury apartments endorsed by the former world number one, and run by the Indian real estate firm Homestead Infrastructure Development. In a wider case against the firm, police have filed charges of cheating and criminal conspiracy

against the Russian tennis player. The complex of luxury apartments, located in Gurgaon a satellite city of New Delhi, was supposed to be ready in 2016, but construction was abandoned after builders took millions from homebuyersʼ pockets before the project folded. "Any celebrity who endorses any product technically becomes an agent for the company. No one would have invested in the project if Sharapovaʼs name was not there," Piyush Singh, a lawyer representing one of the buyers, told AFP.

Iraqi army launches operation to clear Islamic State remnants The capture of Rawa last week signaled the fall of the final IS stronghold in Iraq, putting a decisive end to the terror groupʼs "caliphate" aspirations.

Liberation forces are now pushing into the desert.

Iraq launched an army operation to flush militants out of its border region with Syria, the military said on Thursday, as it pushes to entirely expel "Islamic State" (IS) from its lands.

The Iraqi army, federal police and the Shiite paramilitary group Hashed alShaabi have begun "clearing" a large strip of desert in the west of the country, General Abdelamir Yarallah said in a statement.

Police enter decommissioned Australian detention camp apua New Guinea police have moved in on the shuttered Australian-run Manus detention camp in an attempt to force hundreds of asylum seekers occupying it to leave. The camp long symbolized Canberraʼs strict asylum laws Authorities in Papua New Guinea are removing more than 300 asylum seekers from a squalid immigration camp on Manus island to another location Australia has paid PNG and the nearby island of Nauru to hold refugees as part of its controversial immigration policy.

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276/2017 • 25, November 2017 Weekend issue

White rhino killed by suspected poachers at French zoo The break-in at the Thoiry wildlife park near Paris is suspected as poaching. Rhino horns fetch thousands on the black market.

Zookeepers at the Thoiry zoo and wildlife park made the grisly discovery on Tuesday after an overnight attack. "Staff left the rhino enclosure on Monday. When they returned on Tuesday, an animal had been killed and its two horns had been sawn off," a police spokeswoman told news agency AFP. The 4-year-old white male rhinoceros named Vince had been shot three times in the head. His main horn was stolen, the policewoman said. The second horn was partially cut, leading the zoo to believe the poacher or poachers may have been disturbed or suffered equipment failure. The zoo said the intruders broke through a gate and forced through two doors to reach the animal, without disturbing the five staff members who live on site. The wildlife park is also equipped with security cameras.

Bradley Wiggins speaks of ʼliving hellʼ as UK doping case is closed

Boris Becker has just turned 50.

Is he a star? We Germans love it when things go well for our heroes.

However, when things donʼt go so well, thatʼs no longer the case.

I only ever met Boris Becker once. I ran into him on the set of a television broadcast many years ago. A polite, tall man in a pinstripe suit was waiting backstage to be called before the cameras. Becker will have long since forgotten about it, having met so many journalists over the years. No, this isnʼt true, I tell myself. I imagine that I know Boris Becker inside out. As a tennis fan, I followed every single one of his important matches. Like many others, I

too spent July 7, 1985 in front of the television. Becker won Wimbledon at the age of 17, and he remains the youngest-ever menʼs champion.

From there he went on to a successful career in professional tennis, winning five more Grand Slams. He is one of the greatest athletes this country has ever produced. He has had so many iconic moments, from his lunging volley to the clenched fist, and heʼs been the subject of so many tabloid headlines too.

Preventing dementia with computerized brain training Brain training using a specialized computer program can reduce the risk of dementia by almost one third, a newly published study shows.

Elderly people can reduce the risk of dementia by exercising brain training on a computer, a study by researchers from the University of South Florida in Tampa has shown. The team led by Jerri Edwards launched their longterm experiment,Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly (ACTIVE), in 1999 to find out

whether a training method called "useful field of view," or UFOV, actually helps reduce the risk of dementia.

And as it turns out, it apparently does: 2,802 healthy adults between the ages of 74 and 84 participated in the experiment. They were randomly put into either a control group or one of three other groups that received different types of cognitive training. The first group received instruction on memory strategies, the second group on reasoning strategies and the third group received individualized computerized speed of processing training or UFOV.

Bradley Wiggins has spoken of his "living hell" after the UK AntiDoping agency (UKAD) closed its case against Team Sky. The Olympic gold medallist and Tour de France winner criticized the way the case was handled. UKAD announced on Wednesday that they had insufficient evidence to bring any charges after investigating a so-called ʼmystery packageʼ delivered to the British rider at the 2011 Criterium du Dauphine.

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Mourning geckos donʼt need males Some animal species can do very well without male partners. Mourning geckos are just one of many examples. Their reproduction method — known as parthenogenesis — is our natural phenomenon of the week.

More or less once every two to four weeks over her five-year lifespan, the female mourning gecko goes through the same ritual: The reptile begins the search for a well-protected place to hide one or two of her eggs. Fifty to 75 days later, new geckos hatch from these eggs. Not very spectacular, right? But the nocturnal climbers look exactly like their mother. And if they lay egg, once they reach maturity after eight months, their offspring will look exactly like them. Thatʼs because mourning geckos clone themselves — and all of them are female.

No males are required to reproduce.

That reptiles do not need males is not totally unusual in nature and various other species do the same. Some crabs, snails, and plants as well as komodo dragons and single-celled organisms — all of them come into the world alive and well without a male.

The process behind this is called parthenogenesis which means something like "virgin birth."

Cambodia charges 2 journalists with espionage The arrests are the latest in a widening crackdown on media and the opposition in Cambodia ahead of elections next year. The move further strains ties between the United States and Cambodia. Two Cambodian journalists who worked for a US-funded radio station were charged with espionage on Saturday, the latest move in a widening crackdown on critics of authoritarian Prime Minister Hun Sen. Uon Chhin and Yeang Socheameta, former journalists of the Washingtonbased Radio Free Asia, were arrested on Tuesday for allegedly providing information to a foreign power. The offense carries up to 15years in prison. Radio Free Asiaʼs Phnom Penh bureau closed its office in September, citing "intimidation" and threats that it was violating tax and registration regulations. The Cambodia Daily newspaper reported the two journalists were accused of setting up broadcasting equipment in the capital and sending news reports to Radio Free Asiaʼs Washington bureau.