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Monday, 30th of September 2016

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Evacuated migrants set fire to ‘Jungle’ refugee camp in France

Muslim passenger kicked off American Airlines flight after attendant announces: ‘I'll be watching you’

October 26, 2016 | NEW YORK POST

20 July, 2016 | INDEPENDENT

CALAIS, France — Large portions of the makeshift camp known as “the jungle” in northern France went up in flames Wednesday, as departing migrants set fire to shelters before being forced to leave.

Firefighters battled flames for much of the morning, dousing blazes that began overnight as migrants left the makeshift camp near the city of Calais. The main alley through the camp burned overnight, leaving skeleton-like hulks on either side of the road.

The fires came after French authorities continued a week-long operation to shut down the camp and transport thousands of migrants to reception centers around France.

Gas canisters popped as they exploded in the heat.

One aid group’s truck burst into flames.

Migrants stood and watched. Some laughed.

Steve Barbet, a spokesman for the regional authorities, said one migrant was hospitalized. About 100 migrants were evacuated.

The camp once housed 6,300 migrants, according to authorities, but aid groups said the number was much higher.

Brussels... The Final Destination For Medical Tourists?

October 7, 2016 | INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL TRAVEL JOURNAL Brussels wants to become the final destination for medical tourism. The Belgian city is attracting French citizens for euthanasia.

Euthanasia has been legal in Belgium since 2002 but assessment of a patient’s maturity is required to make this decision. Before a lethal injection can be given, the doctor and patient must agree that the level of suffering is constant and unbearable and cannot be alleviated.

The request must be voluntary, assessed over a reasonable period of time, usually a matter of weeks and carried out with the agreement of a second doctor.

Belgium now includes suffering “unbearable mental pain” as a legal reason for euthanasia.

Although hard to believe, this sudden new market is a by product never imagined when regulators drew up the EU Cross Border Health Directive.

The medical procedure is usually free in Belgium and is covered by the French healthcare system, but the same medical procedure costs 4,000 euros in Switzerland.

Euthanasia is an ethical dilemma for both the individual seeking and providing this service. In the United States euthanasia is illegal. In the EU, they have euthanasia, but the death penalty is illegal.

A Muslim man was removed from an American Airlines flight after a flight attendant publicly announced his name, seat number and said she would be “watching” him.

Mohamed Ahmed Radwan had boarded a plane in Charlotte, North Carolina and the flight attendant went to the tannoy and said: “Mohamed Ahmed, Seat 25-A: I will be watching you.”

The employee made no other announcements about any other passenger.

Mr Radwan asked the employee why she had made the announcements. She reportedly responded that he was being “too sensitive”.

The passenger then reported the incident to two other American Airlines employees.

He was told he must leave the plane as he had made the first air stewardess “uncomfortable”.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has filed a complaint about the incident, which happened in December last year, to the Department of Transportation after failing to resolve the matter directly with the airline.

CAIR’s staff lawyer, Maha Sayed, wrote in the complaint that Mr Radwan was “singled out” and “unjustifiably” removed from the plane due to racial discrimination.

“Given the continuing rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric and hate crimes occurring throughout the United States, this type of reckless and harmful conduct should not be tolerated by our nation's airlines, which are legally charged with safely carrying all individuals who are rightfully present in an equal and nondiscriminatory manner, without regard to their religious affiliation or ethnicity,” the letter read.

“This incident is particularly troubling given the recent wave of incidents in which airline personnel have arbitrarily removed passengers of Muslim and/or Middle Eastern background without an objectively reasonable cause or explanation,” Ms Sayed added.

An American Airlines spokeswoman said in a statement: “American [Airlines] was contacted by CAIR earlier this year. We thoroughly reviewed these allegations and concluded that no discrimination occurred. We serve customers of all backgrounds and faiths and do not tolerate discrimination of any kind.”

In April, a Muslim woman was removed from a Southwest Airlines plane at a Chicago airport after she had asked to switch seats as she was told she had made the flight attendant “uncomfortable”.

A Muslim family of five were also escorted off a United Airlines flight in March for “how they looked”. They said they had asked staff if there were any safety harnesses for their three children. The pilot told them they had to leave as it was “a safety issue”.

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Welcoming refugees with plots of land and cash 'gives boost to local economy’ October 28, 2016 | INDEPENDENT Refugees make a substantial positive contribution to the economy of their host country if they are welcomed and given plots of land, according to the first major study of its kind.

Researchers working with the World Food Programme (WFP) visited two major refugee settlements in Uganda, which hosts more than 700,000 people fleeing conflicts in neighbouring countries yet has one of the most progressive approaches to asylum seekers in the world.

The study found that for every refugee household in Uganda receiving cash aid from the WFP, the local economy was boosted by more than $1,100 dollars a year.

Refugees who were given cash spent most of it buying food from local producers and vendors, and contributed more to the Ugandan economy than those who were given the equivalent amount in food aid.

But Uganda is particularly remarkable because many refugee families are given a plot of agricultural land and raw materials to build their own home upon arrival.

These families contributed more positively to the local economy than those not given their own land, boosting it by an additional $220 a year, as they hire agricultural labour from other households and purchase tools and supplies from local businesses.

“While they are not necessarily more efficient than their Ugandan neighbours, refugees [also] realise higher yields because they invest considerably more labour,” said study co-author and WFP refugee programme manager Jaako Valli.

Professor J Edward Taylor of the University of California, Davis, led the research involving surveys of some 1500 households and 385 businesses, and has previously published a study on the benefits of cash aid over food aid to refugees and their host communities in Rwanda.

“The multipliers [to the local economy] are significant, regardless of whether a refugee family receives cash or food,” he said.

Uganda has been subject to a great deal of international attention for the way it has fostered positive relations between host communities and refugees, despite the huge numbers arriving every day from conflicts in South Sudan, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Speaking at Barack Obama’s New York summit on refugees last month, the Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni said it was his country’s approach to welcome those fleeing conflict as “your unfortunate brothers and sisters”, while recognising the business opportunity they bring.

“It is not correct to treat African refugees as if they are flukers seeking to consume the resources of the indigenous people,” he said.

“While in exile, both out of humanness and far-sight, the refugees need to be well-treated.

Monday, 30th of September 2016

Refugee Crisis 2016 In Europe: Death Toll And Migrant Arrival Increases, Statistics Show October 8, 2016 | International Business Times Last year, Europe’s refugee crisis captured the attention of the world through photographs, headlines and television screens. Now, the migrant crisis is reportedly worse than before — there are more people fleeing and the death toll is higher.

Roughly one million refugees fled Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria and made their way to Europe last year.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) estimates the incoming refugee rate to be 17 percent higher this year with the death toll of those trying to seek refuge up by more than 15 percent.

"This is not a blip," said David Miliband, a former British foreign minister who now heads the International Rescue Committee, to Reuters. "The forces that are driving more and more people from their homes - weak states, big tumults within the Islamic world, a divided international system ...

None of these things are likely to abate soon."

A year-by-year comparison of data from the IOM further spotlights the increase. For example, 258,186 migrants arrived in Europe by the end of July this year, as opposed to the 219,854 refugees last year during the same time frame. In the first eight months of this year, the estimated refugee fatality has been 3,176, compared with the 2,754 who died from Jan. to Aug. last year.

"It’s absolutely incredible because if you think about the panic this caused last year and the incentive there was to really get some policy changes in place, nothing has happened," Gauri van Gulik, deputy Europe director at Amnesty International, told Reuters.

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Monday, 30th of September 2016

Dutch may allow assisted suicide for those who feel they have 'completed life'

Proposition 106 to Legalize Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia in Colorado is Full of Problems

October 12, 2016 | The Telegraph

October 28, 2016 | Life News

The Dutch government intends to draft a law that would legalise assisted suicide for people who feel they have "completed life", but are not necessarily terminally ill, it said on Wednesday.

Attorney Margaret Dore, president of Choice is an Illusion, which has fought assisted suicide and euthanasia legalization efforts in many states, made the following statement in connection with Prop. 106, a pending ballot measure that seeks to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia in Colorado.

The Netherlands was the first country to legalise euthanasia, in 2002, but only for patients who Dutch may allow assisted suicide for those who feel they have 'completed life' were considered to be suffering unbearable pain with no hope of a cure.

In a letter to parliament, the health and justice ministers said details remain to be worked out but that people who "have a wellconsidered opinion that their life is complete, must, under strict and careful criteria, be allowed to finish that life in a manner dignified for them".

The proposal is likely to provoke critics who say Dutch euthanasia practice has already expanded beyond the borders originally envisioned for it, with "unbearable suffering" not only applying to people with terminal diseases, but also to some with mental illnesses and dementia.

The euthanasia policy has widespread backing in Dutch society, and cases have risen by double digits every year for more than a decade as more patients request it and more doctors are willing to carry it out. Euthanasia accounted for 5,516 deaths in the Netherlands in 2015, or 3.9 percent of all deaths nationwide.

Edith Schippers, health minister, wrote in the letter that "because the wish for a self-chosen end of life primarily occurs in the elderly, the new system will be limited to" them.

She did not define a threshold age.

“Choice is an Illusion has launched a new website, “Choice is an Illusion Colorado,” specifically to fight Prop. 106 in these last ten days before the election,” said Dore. “The website’s purpose is to set the record straight on a deceptive and fraudulent measure that promises choice and control for individuals, but takes that choice away.”

“Prop. 106 seeks to legalize physician-assisted suicide, assisted suicide and euthanasia as those terms are traditionally defined,” said Dore. “Prop. 106 is described as ‘aid in dying,’ but its reach is not limited to dying people. ‘Eligible’ persons may have years, even decades, to live.”

Dore said, “The patient’s heir, who will financially benefit from the patient’s death, is allowed to actively participate in signing the patient up for the lethal dose.

There is no oversight over administration.” Dore elaborated, “No doctor, not even a witness, is required to be present at the death.” Dore said, “Even if the patient struggled, who would know? Prop. 106 creates the perfect crime.”

“I live in Washington State where assisted suicide is legal,” said Dore. “Oregon is right next door.”

Dore continued, “So far, I have had two cases where there was trauma suffered in connection with legal assisted suicide.”

Other aspects of the law as she envisions it will include safety mechanisms including third-party checks, reviews and supervision.

“In the first case,” said Dore, “one side of the family wanted my client’s father to take the lethal dose while the other side did not. The father spent the last months of his life caught in the middle and torn over whether he should kill himself. He died the old fashioned way, but his family was torn apart.” Dore said, “In the other case, it’s not clear that death by the lethal dose was voluntary.”

The proposal comes as a surprise, as a commission enlisted to study the idea of allowing a "completed life" extension to current policy concluded there was no need for it.

Dore added, “Prop. 106 seeks to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia for people who are ‘terminal,’ which is defined as a prediction of less than six months to live. In real life, such persons can have years to live.”

The ministers disagreed. "The Cabinet is of the opinion that a request for help (in dying) from people who suffer unbearably and have no hope without an underlying medical reason can be a legitimate request".

“One reason,” said Dore, “is that the ‘six months to live’ is determined without treatment.” “To illustrate,” Dore said, “I have a friend in Oregon who was talked out of assisted suicide sixteen years ago. Her doctor convinced her to be treated for cancer instead.”

The new law will require "careful guidance and vetting ahead of time with a 'death assistance provider' with a medical background, who has also been given additional training".

They hope to draft a law, in consultation with doctors, ethicists and other experts, by the end of 2017.“[And] when peace returns to their tormented land, they will go back and become your treasured partners in production and exchange of goods and services with their former hosts,” he said.

“If Prop. 106 becomes law, there will be new lethal paths of elder abuse, which will be legally sanctioned and hidden from view,” said Dore. “People with years, even decades to live, will be encouraged to throw away their lives. Even if you like the concept of assisted suicide and euthanasia, Prop. 106 is the wrong law.”

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Monday, 30th of September 2016

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Industry weighs radical shake-up of European drug pricing June 9, 2016 | Business News The pharmaceutical industry is considering a radical shift in the way it prices drugs in Europe so companies are rewarded for the clinical benefit of treatments rather than the number of pills sold, according to an internal report.

The industry also wants an end to tenders for patented medicines and curbs on parallel trade, under which wholesalers buy drugs in low-cost European markets and sell them for higher prices elsewhere.

The high price of drugs is straining Europe's cash-strapped health systems and depriving some patients of the latest products, to the concern of manufacturers who argue they can save costs in the long run by keeping people out of hospital.

The report said "affordability is a major issue for healthcare systems across Europe" and the need for a better system would only grow with the rollout of hard-to-price cancer drug combinations, new antibiotics and stem cell therapies.

As a result, companies are looking at a fundamentally different way of getting paid for their innovations, according to the internal report, a copy of which was seen by Reuters.

The Vicious Circle of the EU Drug Pricing System

Its proposed "roadmap for change towards outcomes-based reward systems" will be discussed by the board of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (Efpia) on June 16, which groups the world's top drugmakers and national trade associations.

The report is the clearest sign yet that the drug industry is ready to negotiate a new pricing framework with governments and insurers.

"This is not without risk," according to the paper by Efpia's director of market access Francois Bouvy. "If a product does not deliver on its clinical promise, society should not continue to pay for it. Equally, if the product delivers more value than was ever expected, this extra value must be rewarded."

Efpia said in a statement the leaked internal document was developed to support "continued dialogue" with governments on ways to make medicines accessible and healthcare more sustainable, while securing medical innovation.

TOO EXPENSIVE The concept of drug pricing based on clinical results has been gaining ground for some years and has the support of several leading industry figures, including Novartis (NOVN.S) Chief Executive Joe Jimenez, the current president of Efpia.

Europe already has some ad hoc results-based pricing agreements.

Britain, for example, agreed a deal with Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) a decade ago whereby the health service only pays for multiple myeloma drug Velcade in patients who respond after four treatment cycles. Italy uses patient registries to pay for new cancer drugs based on actual patient response.

But the Efpia proposals go further by suggesting the wholesale adoption of the new approach.

Drug pricing is a hot topic worldwide, as advances in medical science come at an increasingly high cost.

A study of cancer drug prices in seven countries released on Monday highlighted cost obstacles in many markets and a report last month into antibiotic resistance also called for a rethink of market mechanisms.

There are likely to be plenty of battles ahead, especially as the industry is looking for a trade-off in the form of relief from market mechanisms that weigh on drug prices in Europe.

In particular, the Efpia paper says external reference pricing, which allows governments to refer to prices in other countries when determining what they will pay, "should be removed as new systems evolve".

March 3, 2016 | PHARM EXEC A new study of drug pricing in Europe identifies plenty of problems, but doesn't offer much in the way of new answers—and drug firms are disappointed that the recommendations leave intact what is frequently referred to as a vicious circle in the system.

The European Commission released the "Study on enhanced cross-country coordination in the area of pharmaceutical product pricing" in late February, as its latest contribution to an increasingly anguished debate in Europe over how to get good drugs to patients at a price that health systems can afford.

But this lengthy document isn't likely to make much difference, despite its exhaustive review of the current situation, and a host of possible scenarios that it advances.

Crucially, it ducks one of the central issues: in a Europe of 28 countries with very different levels of national wealth and healthcare budgets, inequities of access are bound to appear, unless some form of compensating mechanism is put in place. The study fails to address this dilemma squarely, and its recommendations are consequently of limited value.

As the study points out, most countries in Europe rely on a system known as external price referencing (EPR) to fix the price they allow drugs to be sold or reimbursed at. This means that about 30 countries make a comparison with the price in other countries before they agree a price for the drug to be available at home. National authorities get some sense of reassurance that they are not going to be paying much more than other national authorities. >

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Roscosmos says Galileo, other European space programs could suffer from payment dispute October 25, 2016 | Space News The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, on Oct. 21 gave written warning to the French government that it would take France to court in six months unless France’s Arianespace launch-service company frees up about 300 million euros ($330 million) in long-overdue payments.

Monday, 30th of September 2016

The most visible of the bilateral ESA-Roscosmos programs is ExoMars. Russia’s role includes providing two heavy-lift Proton rockets for the ExoMars missions.

The first launched in 2016 and the second is scheduled for launch in 2020 — assuming that both ESA and Roscosmos can find the necessary financing for the program.

ESA governments are expected to decide on ExoMars funding in December.

In what appears to be an attempt to force France’s European neighbors to apply pressure to Paris, Roscosmos hinted that multiple cooperative space efforts between Russian and the European Union, and with the European Space Agency (ESA), could suffer if the payments are not freed.

Roscosmos is invoking a 1989 bilateral investment security treaty with France. It says its Oct. 21 letter sets in motion a six-month deadline for the dispute’s resolution, after which Roscosmos will take France to court for violating the treaty.

The payments, which are not disputed by Arianespace, have been one of the collateral effects of the battle by former shareholders of Russia’s Yukos oil company. In 2014, these shareholders won an initial award of $50 billion from an international arbitration panel in The Hague, Netherlands, against the Russian government for dismantling the company.

EU and ESA sign deal to keep ahead of global space competition

Since then, the shareholders have been trying to collect Russian government assets wherever they find a sympathetic legal environment outside Russia, including France and Belgium. In France, different shareholder representatives sought seizure of the Eutelsat and Arianespace payments.

The same dispute has blocked payments to other Russian companies. Parisbased satellite operator Eutelsat owes Russia’s biggest satellite operator, Russian Satellite Communications Co. (RSCC) of Moscow, around $300 million for services related to Eutelsat use of RSCC satellites.

That money too has been blocked but is not part of the latest Roscosmos action, perhaps because RSCC, while owned by the Russian government, is viewed as a private company.

In a letter sent to the office of French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, Roscosmos Deputy Director-General Sergey Savelyev said Russia’s work with all European governments could suffer.

Widening the dispute to ESA and the EU “Roscosmos works in close collaboration with numerous countries, including France,” Savelyev said, according to an Oct. 24 statement published on Roscosmos’ behalf by Hamas Paris. “The seizure of payments due by Arianespace to Roscosmos for work on numerous projects, including Galileo, complicates future cooperation on these programs and on other space programs of the European Union.

“Roscosmos has always conducted an efficient and mutually beneficial cooperation with the EU and with the European Space Agency. We and our partners obviously hope to put this misunderstanding behind us as soon as possible to resume our cooperation.”

Evry, France-based Arianespace, which is not owned by the French government, purchases medium-lift Soyuz rockets from Russian manufacturers through a contract with Roscosmos.

The Europeanized Soyuz is operated by Arianespace alongside the heavylift Ariane 5 rocket and the Italian-led Vega small-satellite launcher.

Soyuz has notably been used to launch European government satellites, and has been the work-horse rocket for deployment of Europe’s Galileo positioning, navigation and timing satellite constellation.

The European Commission, which is the executive arm of the 28-nation European Union, owns Galileo. Concerned about over-relying on a single vehicle, the commission has purchased several Ariane 5 rockets to launch the Galileo satellites.

The first of these Ariane 5 launches for Galileo is scheduled for midNovember.

Bringing ESA into the legal dispute over Yukos payments will raise inevitable questions of what programs beyond Galileo might be held hostage to the unblocking of the Roscosmos funds.

October 27, 2016 | engadget The European Space Agency has lined up several projects in the next few years, from its wind satellite aiming to go up in 2017 to a 2020 ExoMars expedition to follow up on the missing Schiaparelli probe that likely botched its landing last week. The group pursues mostly neutral research and development missions with loose ties to the European Union, but both groups signed an agreement today outlining future ambitions and plans to protect and enrich mutual interests. The Space Strategy for Europe declaration is a mix of commercial coverage and deployment of defensive assets -- aspirations to keep the continent's governments and industry competitive in space technology.

The pro-business moves in the agreement's outline include urging the continent's private and public sector to use more space data generated by the EU's Galileo satellite network, which started going up in 2011. This is the greatest resource generated by European space tech, along with the information generated by the array of Copernicus spacecraft, so it's a no-brainer to push more native industry into using the data. To boost development of new marketable tech, the European Commission is also dedicating some EU funding to prop up cosmic entrepreneurs and work to secure private funding for them.

As for the existing space industry, the Commission sees their plan to deploy 30 satellites over the next 10-15 years as an opportunity to support the European-built Ariadne 6 and Vega C rockets. But the report notes that they will act as a "smart customer" and aggregate launches, suggesting that they'll adhere to market offers.

The agreement's defensive plans aim to ensure that assets launched by companies and governments are protected. This includes developing the EU Space Situational Awareness Service to protect orbital infrastructure from passive hazards like debris and cosmic weather, as well as shielding them from deliberate cyberattacks. As part of the upcoming European Defence Action Plan, the Commission will also begin a GovSatCom initiative to ensure reliable, secure and cheap satellite communication between EU members and national authorities. >

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While the declaration concludes that Europe's space industry is strong, building a third of the world's satellites and accounting for about 21% of the value of the global space sector, it makes no qualms about the reason the EU and ESA are signing: Competition.

While ambitious

American private sector luminaries like Elon Musk steal headlines, it's other nations quietly revving up their space programs that concern Europe. China just launched its second experimental space station keeping it on track for a full one in 2020, while India just successfully tested its first tiny reusable space shuttle. For the EU and ESA, the clock is ticking.

How did the European Space Agency's Mars lander meet its untimely end?

October 23, 2016 | The Christian Science Monitor NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has obtained low-resolution photos that appear to show the wreckage of ESA's Schiaparelli lander.

Just about a minute before it was supposed to touch down on Mars, Schiaparelli lost contact with mission control.

At first it was unclear what became of the craft, designed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Russian space agency Roscosmos to demonstrate soft landing technologies on Mars. Then, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter obtained low-resolution photos that appeared to show a wreckage.

On Friday, ESA officials confirmed that the lander, which began its final descent about 2.5 miles above the surface, was likely lost.

“Schiaparelli reached the ground with a velocity that was much higher than it should have been, several hundred kilometers per hour, and was then unfortunately destroyed by the impact,” ExoMars Flight Director Michel Denis told Reuters.

Schiaparelli’s landing was anything but ‘soft’ – the spacecraft failed to fire its descent-slowing thrusters as long as intended, and full fuel tanks would have exploded upon impact.

ESA has not yet determined what caused the crash, but is currently analyzing the lander’s recovered descent data for clues. Officials say the craft's descent technology, designed to slow the lander down as it careened toward Mars, deployed normally.

The Christian Science Monitor’s Weston Williams reported earlier this month: Essentially, Schiaparelli will be launched with a traditional heat shield and parachute combo, but the thin atmosphere will not be enough to slow the [Entry, Descent and Landing Demonstrator] down enough for a safe landing with those methods. Once the parachute slows the descent as much as it can, the hydrazine rockets will slow it the rest of the way before cutting out two meters from the surface. From there, the probe will drop, with a crushable layer protecting the rest of the probe from harm.

“But somehow the parachute was released a bit too early, and after that the engine functioned, but only for a few seconds, which was too little,” Denis said.

Monday, 30th of September 2016

The crash may conjure up painful memories for ESA and spaceflight enthusiasts. In 2003, the agency’s Beagle 2 lander lost contact with mission control during its final descent. For twelve years, nobody knew what became of the craft. In 2015, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter obtained new images of the landing site: Beagle 2 had touched down successfully, but eventually lost power after it failed to deploy two of its solar panels.

Other nations have experienced similar mishaps on the Red Planet. In 1998, NASA’s Mars Polar Lander slammed into the planet’s rocky surface after prematurely terminating its engine during final descent. More than two decades earlier, a design flaw in Russia’s Mars 6 lander prevented the return of any usable data from the craft’s entry.

In many ways, Schiaparelli’s mission was failure.

Without a successful test landing, ESA’s 2020 Mars rover will have a lot less to go on. But officials still consider ExoMars a tentative success: the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) is still operational, sniffing out methane and other bio-significant gases on its orbit around the Red Planet.

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ISIS Kills 23 Civilian Hostages in Western Afghanistan October 26, 2016 | NY TIMES KABUL, Afghanistan — Gunmen who claim to be followers of the Islamic State killed 23 civilian hostages in a remote province in western Afghanistan, officials said on Wednesday.

The killings on Tuesday in Ghor Province were the most recent indication that the extremist organization, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has been gaining adherents in new parts of the country, even as the authorities have successfully moved against its strongholds in the eastern province of Nangarhar, which borders Pakistan.

Provincial police and government officials in Ghor said the killings were carried out by a former Taliban unit with 150 members who had defected from that insurgent group and declared allegiance to the Islamic State. The Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid quickly disassociated his group from the deaths, posting a message on his Twitter account saying the killings had “nothing to do with the mujahedeen,” a term referring to Taliban fighters.

The Ghor police chief, Mustafa Mohseni, said the former Taliban unit had clashed in recent days with a pro-government militia, which managed to kill the extremists’ commander, a man known as Farooq, who had led them since before they abandoned the Taliban.

The fighting took place outside Feroz Koh, formerly known as Chaghcharan, the provincial capital of Ghor. As the insurgents retreated, they rounded up 23 civilians in the area, and on Tuesday executed them, Chief Mohseni and other police officials said. Chief Mohseni was not sure of the number killed, but another police official in Ghor put it at 23. The authorities found out about the killings from local elders who were contacted about the return of the victims’ bodies for burial.

The militants had attacked villages on the outskirts of the provincial capital but met strong resistance from pro-government militiamen, backed by fighters from the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, officials said.

“It was a retaliatory act brutally carried out by those so-called Daeshis,” said Sayed Nader Shah Bahr, a member of Parliament from Ghor, referring to followers of the Islamic State. “They killed 23 shepherds and took away with them about a thousand sheep belonging to those they killed.”

Before pledging allegiance to the Taliban and later the Islamic State, Farooq, the commander, was known as the head of an armed criminal gang notorious for sheep-rustling, local officials said.

Ghor is far from Afghanistan’s main locus of Islamic State activity, in parts of Nangarhar Province, where the extremists have been subjected to American airstrikes as well as government military action in the past two years. Many of the Islamic State fighters in that area also appear to be former Taliban insurgents who have since pledged to follow the Islamic State in the Khorasan, a term referring to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The American military claimed in August to have killed the founder and leader of the Islamic State in the Khorasan, Hafiz Saeed Khan, in an airstrike. Government officials have said that scores of the group’s fighters in Nangarhar have been killed in military operations as well.

Monday, 30th of September 2016

Islamic State groups were also operating in the southeaster n province of Ghazni and the southwestern province of Helmand last year, but they were reported to have been largely defeated by Taliban insurgents in those areas.

This year, however, Islamic State militants appear to have turned to suicide bomb attacks in urban areas.

In January, a bombing outside the Pakistani Consulate in Jalalabad killed seven, and in July, a bombing against ethnic Hazaras at a protest in Kabul killed 80 people. The Islamic State claimed to have carried out both attacks.

London imam who tried to sue BBC for calling him an extremist has case dismissed at High Court October 28, 2016 | INDEPENDENT An imam who attempted to sue the BBC for calling him an extremist has had his case thrown out at the High Court, where a judge found he had made “dangerous” speeches on jihad.

Shakeel Begg, the chief imam at the Lewisham Islamic Centre, claimed damages for libel over an edition of Sunday Politics aired in 2013.

The presenter, Andrew Neil, named the 47-year-old among a number “of extremist speakers”, saying he had referred to jihad as “the greatest of deeds” for Muslims.

Mr Begg denied being an extremist and claimed the BBC had defamed him, providing evidence of interfaith work in London communities and cooperation with the police.

But the High Court threw out his case on Friday, finding that the BBC’s allegations were substantially true and that the imam was “an extremist Islamic speaker who espouses extremist Islamic positions”.

“Mr Begg had recently promoted and encouraged religious violence by telling Muslims that violence in support of Islam would constitute a man’s greatest deed,” read its judgement.

In a witness statement, he described himself as “a proponent of tolerance, peace, nonviolence, understanding between the faiths, cooperation with the police … and the participation of Muslims in civil society” but a judge said his substantial community work was at odds with a series of speeches given between 2006 and 2011.

Mr Justice Haddon-Cave, sitting in the Queen’s Bench division, said: “The Court concluded that that Mr Begg was something of a Jekyll and Hyde character: he presented one face to the local and inter-faith community and another to particular Muslim and other receptive audiences. >

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“Thus, on the occasions when it has suited him – and he was speaking to predominantly Muslim audiences and/or audiences who might be receptive or sympathetic to his message – he shed the cloak of respectability and revealed the horns of extremism.

“His reputation for respectability is likely to have made his [extremist] messages all the more compelling and seductive to his audiences.

“For this reason, therefore, his words would have been all the more effective and dangerous.”

Mr Justice Haddon-Cave said Mr Begg repeatedly espoused views in line with Salafi Islamism, including “violently extreme” position on jihad.

“The Court said it was all too easy for someone in Mr Begg’s position of power and influence as an imam to plant the seed of Islamic extremism in a young mind, which is then liable to be propagated on the Internet,” a statement said.

“For the reasons given in the judgment, the Court dismissed the claimant’s claim.”

Evidence presented included a speech given by the imam at a meeting organised by the Kingston University Islamic Society in October 2006, where he encouraged his audience to wage “jihad” in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

“You want to make jihad?” he said. “Very good. Don’t shout and scream and fight with your Muslim brother who is doing something else for the deen [belief of Islam]. Take some money and go to Palestine and fight, fight the terrorists, fight the Zionists in Palestine if you want to do this.”

In another speech at the Lewisham Islamic Centre in May 2009, Mr Begg claimed “destroying the disbelievers and hypocrites” was a religious duty for Muslims, adding: “Fighting is prescribed upon you … those who fight have a higher status [with Allah] than those who do not fight.”

The BBC also cited his comments at a 2010 rally outside the American Embassy in London in support of Aafia Siddiqui, an alleged al-Qaeda supporter jailed for attempting to kill Americans, and at a dinner held by Cage, the organisation that campaigns on behalf of Muslim prisoners, later that year.

During a protest outside Belmarsh prison the following year, Mr Begg expressed support for Muslim inmates detained under terror laws for “speaking truth to power” in a speech the High Court called “particularly sinister”.

In an article posted online in February 2009, Mr Begg accused a moderate Islamic scholar, Sheikh Tawfique Chowdhury, of “signing a deal with the devil” and betraying “his covenant with Allah” for giving a speech to counter-terrorism officers in Cardiff.

A spokesperson for the BBC said: “We were right to stand by the journalism of Sunday Politics.

“The judge has concluded, based on the evidence, that Imam Begg has preached religious violence and an extremist worldview in his remarks.”

Lewisham Islamic Centre has not yet responded to The Independent’s request for comment.

Monday, 30th of September 2016