Israel has authorised the construction of 3,000 more housing units in the occupied Palestinian territories, Israeli media reports say.
It is thought the homes are to be built in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
The Palestinian Authority has said it will not return to peace talks without a freeze in settlement building.
The reports come a day after a vote at the UN General Assembly upgraded the Palestinians’ status at the UN to that of non-member observer state.
According to the Israeli Haaretz newspaper, some of the new units will be between Jerusalem and the settlement of Maaleh Adumim.
Plans to build settlements in the area, known as E1, are strongly opposed by Palestinians, who say settlements will cut the West Bank in two, preventing the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state.
Israel authorises settler homes http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/51606000/jpg/_51606573_fa1d16c0-9c6c-4f82-b0b8-ab66ddd94f78.jpg
More than 100 people have been detained in a massive police raid on a gambling den near the Vietnamese city of Hanoi.
Officials say 200 police stormed a guest-house in Bac Ninh province where gambling was taking place over a game involving the flipping of coins.
Officers seized $ 260,000 (£162,110) from the premises.
Apart from casinos where foreign nationals are allowed to play, gambling is illegal in Vietnam.
Nevertheless, correspondents say that gambling remains popular across the country, particularly when it comes to matches in international football leagues, which are shown on television in Vietnam.
Illegal gambling rings are believed to run operations allowing people to bet with large and small sums of money.
More than 100 people have been detained in a massive police raid on a gambling den near the Vietnamese city of Hanoi.
Officials say 200 police stormed a guest-house in Bac Ninh province where gambling was taking place over a game involving the flipping of coins.
Officers seized $ 260,000 (£162,110) from the premises.
Apart from casinos where foreign nationals are allowed to play, gambling is illegal in Vietnam.
Nevertheless, correspondents say that gambling remains popular across the country, particularly when it comes to matches in international football leagues, which are shown on television in Vietnam.
Illegal gambling rings are believed to run operations allowing people to bet with large and small sums of money.
NEW DELHI: India has recorded a 57 per cent drop in number of new HIV infections during the last decade, say latest figures from the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO).
India has demonstrated an overall reduction of 57 percent in estimated annual new HIV infections (among adult population) from 2.74 lakh in 2000 to 1.16 lakh in 2011, said a NACO report released Friday.
“Major contribution to this reduction comes from the high prevalence states where a reduction of 76 percent has been noted during the same period. However, rising trends of new infections are noted in the some of the low prevalence states,” the report said.
The report, released by Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, also says nearly 1.5 lakh lives have been saved due to free ART medicines provided to HIV/AIDS patients.
“The latest round of HIV Sentinel Surveillance was completed in 2011. The data generated there has been used for estimation of HIV burden and projection of HIV epidemic trends in the country,” a statement said.
“The HIV estimations 2012 indicate an overall continuing reduction in adult HIV prevalence, new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths in India”.
Released on the eve of World AIDS Day, the report says adult HIV prevalence at national level has continued its steady decline from estimated level of 0.41 percent in 2001 through 0.35 percent in 2006 to 0.27 percent in 2011.
The estimated number of people living with HIV was 20,88,642 in 2011, the report said. It is estimated that about 1.48 lakh people died of AIDS related causes in 2011 in India. Deaths among HIV infected children account for 7 percent of all AIDS-related deaths.
It is estimated that around 1.16 lakh new HIV infections among adults and around 14,500 new infections among children occurred during 2011.
Canada’s slowdown was in part due to weakening activity in its oil and gas sector
A string of major economies have reported disappointing data.
Economic growth slowed in India in the third quarter, while in Canada and Brazil it dropped surprisingly sharply.
Meanwhile in the eurozone, unemployment hit a new high of 11.7% in October, as German retail sales fell unexpectedly and French consumer spending dropped.
And in the US, citizens saw their incomes stagnate in October, while spending fell slightly, in large part due to disruption from Storm Sandy.
US personal incomes rose less than 0.1% from a month earlier, according to the Commerce Department, while spending fell 0.2%.
The department’s Bureau for Economic Analysis, which compiled the report, said that much of the underlying data was not yet available, and the drop in spending largely reflected its own estimates of the likely loss of business due to Storm Sandy, which made landfall near New York City on 29 October.
Other recent data from the US has pointed to a strong rebound in the world’s biggest economy, including a surprise upward revision of the country’s third quarter annualised growth rate from 2% to 2.7%.
Losing momentum
North of the border by contrast, Canada’s economy fared far worse over the summer.
A sudden drop in the country’s exports and weakening activity in its oil and gas sector pulled its annualised growth rate in the third quarter down to 0.6%, short of the 0.9% growth rate expected on average by economists.
This was the same growth rate that Brazil manage to eke out during the same period – but a lowly 0.6% growth rate came as a much bigger shock for a country that was growing at a rapid 7.5% clip in 2010. The markets had expected the growth rate to be twice as fast.
The poor showing puts further pressure on President Dilma Rousseff’s government to do something. It has already announced up to $ 50bn (£32bn) of stimulus measures, as the economy has steadily lost momentum over the last two years.
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India’s government faces a similar headache.
The country’s growth rate came in at 5.3% during the third quarter, compared with a year earlier – in line with economists’ expectations, but nonetheless disappointing for a country that aspires to a Chinese-style 8% growth rate.
Like Brazil, India has hit a soft patch in the last 18 months, and has averaged less than 5.5% growth this year.
Markets took heart from the data, with shares in Bombay rallying on hopes that the economic slowdown would give the government the political impetus it needs to push through economic reforms, including a long-delayed plan to open up the country’s retail sector to international competition and investment.
Of the major developing economies, only China appears to have recovered from what has looked to be a worrying slowdown before the summer, with a string of positive economic data announced just ahead of the country’s decennial leadership transition earlier this month.
Euro woes
In Europe, however, the picture remains bleak.
European Central Bank president Mario Draghi said on Friday that the region would not exit its crisis until the latter half of next year, although he conceded that the ECB’s recent monetary interventions had helped put an end to the months of financial market stress experienced up until the summer.
Royal Bank of Scotland’s Alberto Gallo: “The real issue is we’re in a two-speed Europe”
The southern European economies of Italy and Spain have been in recession all year, thanks to government spending cuts, troubled banks that have been cutting back their lending, and in Spain’s case a steadily deflating property bubble.
Data released by Eurostat showed unemployment continuing to rise in both countries, while in Germany the jobless rate held steady close to a record low.
However, Germany and France – the eurozone’s two biggest economies – have not been entirely immune from their neighbours’ travails.
Data on Friday showed that consumer spending in France fell 0.2% in October – in line with low expectations for an economy increasingly seen as lacking in competitiveness.
More worryingly, retail sales in Germany – albeit a volatile data series – dropped 0.8% in the same month, catching most analysts by surprise.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Activists in Syria reported on Friday that Internet connections were cut for a second successive day, fanning speculation among opponents of President Bashar al-Assad about the government’s intentions in coming days.
But some supporters of the rebels seeking Mr. Assad’s overthrow in the country’s bloody civil war said that they could bypass the blackout on Internet servers by using satellite communications.
“Generally speaking, in Idlib we haven’t had an Internet connection or working landlines since the very beginning of the uprising,” said Ahmad Kadour an activist in the northern province of Idlib. “Right now, the Internet is not working in any part of Syria, but most activists use satellite Internet connections and own satellite phones so all is well. This operation won’t affect activists’ work much.”
On Thursday, Syria lost two major links with the outside world as the largest commercial airport in the capital canceled flights because of fighting nearby and Internet access disappeared across the country, perhaps signaling an impending escalation by the government against the uprising.
The disruption at the airport, Damascus International — a crucial conduit for supplies, money and weapons for the government — was a measure of how intense the conflict has become around the capital in recent weeks. As security forces launched a major counteroffensive against rebels nearby, the government’s willingness to carry out military operations in the area suggested that it was feeling the pressure of rebel advances.
News reports from Syria on Friday offered confused accounts of the fighting, quoting activists as saying that the main road to the Damascus airport had reopened after intense clashes in the early hours in which rebel forces destroyed government vehicles.
A reporter for The Associated Press said Damascus was largely quiet, although there were sounds of fighting in the suburbs — a report that seemed corroborated by a Reuters dispatch quoting Damascus residents as saying black smoke could be seen from the east and south of the city while the sound of shelling from those areas was constant.
Reuters also said government forces used airstrikes against rebel targets near the road leading to the airport, while a regional flight operator said civilian flights were not landing there for the second day.
Keeping the airport open helped the government project a sense of normalcy, and interrupting service creates problems, activists said, because the large planes needed for supplies cannot land at smaller military airports.
On Thursday, two companies that monitor Internet traffic, Arbor Networks and Akamai, released data demonstrating that the Internet went out across the country around 10 a.m. The Internet has been a strategic tool of the uprising and the government alike, allowing activists to organize and communicate but also exposing them to surveillance. Videos uploaded by both sides have made the conflict extraordinarily visible to the outside world.
Rebels have put the government under increasing pressure in recent weeks, taking oil fields in eastern Syria and a major air base near Aleppo, and demonstrating their growing ability to shoot down aircraft.
On Thursday, several airlines said they had halted flights to Damascus. An official at EgyptAir said it had indefinitely suspended flights because of the security situation there, though morning flights to the northern city of Aleppo were operating.
“They’ve turned it into a military airport lately,” said Abdul Rahman al-Barra, 27, an activist in the Damascus suburbs, adding that rebels had recently captured 40 pro-government militiamen in ambushes on the airport road. “Helicopters and warplanes land there, and Russian and Iranian experts travel through it.”
Speaking over Skype, which he said he was using with a satellite connection, Mr. Barra said fighters with the Free Syrian Army, the loosely knit rebel umbrella group, were battling government forces about a mile from the airport. “It’s a hit-and-run kind of battle,” he said. “The Free Syrian Army is using mortar shells without getting close to the airport, which the regime is firmly gripping now.”
Hania Mourtada and Anne Barnard reported from Beirut, Lebanon, and Hala Droubi from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Kareem Fahim and Mai Ayyad contributed reporting from Cairo, Christine Hauser from New York, and Alan Cowell from London.
