An Illinois man who made more than 27,000 crosses to commemorate victims of mass shootings across the country is retiring.
Greg Zanis came to realize, after 23 years, his Crosses for Losses ministry was beginning to take a personal and financial toll on him, according to The Beacon-News.
“I had a breaking point in El Paso,” he said, referring to the mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. “I hadn’t slept for two days, it was 106 degrees and I collapsed from the pressure when I heard there were two more victims of the mass shooting.”

FILE – Gloria Garces kneels in front of crosses at a memorial near the scene of a mass shooting at a shopping complex, Aug. 6, 2019, in El Paso, Texas.Beginning with Columbine
Zanis has set up crosses after the school shootings at Columbine, Sandy Hook and Parkland. He also placed crosses after the Las Vegas music festival shooting and the Orlando nightclub shooting.
“I leave a piece of my heart behind each time I go,” he said.
In 2016 he made more than 700 crosses that were carried along Michigan Avenue in Chicago to honor each person who had been killed that year.
Earlier this year, Zanis found himself making crosses for his very own hometown of Aurora, Illinois, after a Henry Pratt Co. employee opened fire on his co-workers.
“After Orlando, it never stopped,” Zanis said of the mass shootings. “The country had me on the road for a while every week. I have driven 850,000 miles to put up crosses. I slept in my truck and never had the money to cover what I was doing.”

FILE – A photograph hangs from one of the 58 white crosses set up for the victims of the Route 91 music festival mass shooting in Las Vegas, Oct. 5, 2017.Deep in debt
With donations from time to time, Zanis mainly relied on his own resources to build the crosses.
“At one point last year I was $10,000 in debt and somebody covered that for me,” he said. “Now I am $14,000 in debt.”
Zanis hopes to pass on his ministry to the nonprofit Lutheran Church Charities of Northbrook.
“I feel it is not the end of the ministry. It is the end of me doing it,” he said.

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The U.N. General Assembly approved a resolution Friday strongly condemning human rights abuses against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims and other minorities, including arbitrary arrests, torture, rape and deaths in detention. 
 
The 193-member world body voted 134-9 with 28 abstentions in favor of the resolution, which also calls on Myanmar’s government to take urgent measures to combat incitement of hatred against the Rohingya and other minorities in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan states. 
 
General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding but they do reflect world opinion. 
 
Buddhist-majority Myanmar has long considered the Rohingya to be “Bengalis“ from Bangladesh, even though their families have lived in the country for generations. Nearly all have been denied citizenship since 1982, effectively rendering them stateless, and they are also denied freedom of movement and other basic rights. 

FILE – A boy searches for useful items among the ashes of burned dwellings after a fire destroyed shelters at a camp for internally displaced Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State near Sittwe, May 3, 2016.The long-simmering Rohingya crisis exploded on August 25, 2017, when Myanmar’s military launched what it called a clearance campaign in Rakhine in response to an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. The campaign led to the mass Rohingya exodus to Bangladesh and to accusations that security forces committed mass rapes and killings and burned thousands of homes. 
Myanmar response
Myanmar’s U.N. ambassador, Hau Do Suan, called the resolution “another classic example of double-standards [and] selective and discriminatory application of human rights norms,“ designed “to exert unwanted political pressure on Myanmar.” 
 
He said the resolution did not attempt to find a solution to the complex situation in Rakhine state and did not recognize government efforts to address the challenges. 
 
The resolution, the ambassador said, “will sow seeds of distrust and will create further polarization of different communities in the region.” 

FILE – Rohingya refugees gather to mark the second anniversary of the exodus at the Kutupalong camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Aug. 25, 2019.The resolution expresses alarm at the influx of Rohingya Muslims into neighboring Bangladesh over the last four decades — the total is now 1.1 million, which includes 744,000 who arrived since August 2017 — “in the aftermath of atrocities committed by the security and armed forces of Myanmar.” 
 
The assembly also expressed alarm at an independent international fact-finding mission’s findings “of gross human rights violations and abuses suffered by Rohingya Muslims and other minorities” by the security forces, which the mission said “undoubtedly amount to the gravest crimes under international law.” 
‘Deep distress’
 
The resolution called for an immediate cessation of fighting and hostilities. 
 
It reiterated “deep distress at reports that unarmed individuals in Rakhine state have been and continue to be subjected to the excessive use of forces and violations of international human rights law, international humanitarian law by the military and security and armed forces.” 
 
And it called for Myanmar’s forces to protect all people, and for urgent steps to ensure justice for all rights violations. 
 
The resolution also urged the government “to expedite efforts to eliminate statelessness and the systematic and institutionalized discrimination” against the Rohingya and other minorities, to dismantle camps for Rohingyas and others displaced in Rakhine, and “to create the conditions necessary for the safe, voluntary, dignified and sustainable return of all refugees, including Rohingya Muslim refugees.” 
 
It noted that the Rohingya have twice refused to return to Myanmar from Bangladesh because of the absence of these conditions. 

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Jocelyn Burdick, who became the first woman to represent North Dakota in the U.S. Senate when she briefly filled the seat vacated by her late husband, has died. She was 97.
Burdick died Thursday night at a care facility in Fargo, her son, Cass County State’s Attorney Birch Burdick, told The Associated Press.
The Democrat was appointed to the Senate in September 1992, following the death of her husband, Quentin, a cornerstone of the North Dakota Democratic Party. She served until a special election that November.
Burdick was a founding member of Democratic Women Plus and a strong supporter of women’s rights.
Supporter of women’s rights
She was private person and avoided the media while her husband was in office. But as a senator in 1992, she signed on to the Equal Rights Amendment and a proposal to guarantee abortion rights.
In her only Senate speech, she said she was proud of making history and of voting to override President George H.W. Bush’s vetoes of bills requiring family leave and of overturning a ban on abortion counseling in federally funded clinics.
“I’ve always had the courage of my convictions,” she said in a 1993 interview with The Associated Press. “From the time I was a young woman, I’ve taken positions I thought were right. And I stuck with them.”
Burdick was appointed to the Senate by then-Gov. George A. Sinner on Sept. 12, 1992, several days after the death of her husband. He served 34 years in Congress after being first elected to the U.S. House in 1958.
After her husband’s death, Jocelyn Burdick pledged to “serve the people of North Dakota and to finish Quentin’s unfinished agenda.” She served until a special election that November, when Kent Conrad was chosen to fill out the rest of Burdick’s term. Conrad, also a North Dakota senator, agreed to run at the urging of fellow Democrats and Burdick.
Family roots in women’s suffrage
Jocelyn Birch was born Feb. 6, 1922, in Fargo. Her great-grandmother, Matilda Joslyn Gage, was a leader in the women’s rights movement and worked closely with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
She attended Principia College in Elsah, Illinois, and then transferred to Northwestern University outside Chicago where she earned a degree in speech. She worked at radio station KVOX in Moorhead, Minnesota, as one of the area’s first woman announcers.
In 1946, she married Kenneth Peterson of Grand Forks, who died 10 years later. They had two children, Birch and Leslie.
She married Quentin Burdick July 7, 1960, just a week after he won a special election to the U.S. Senate. Quentin Burdick also was a widower, with four children, when he married Jocelyn. They had one son, Gage, who died in 1978.
Jocelyn Burdick’s parents were Republicans, but she was a founding member of Democratic Women Plus, a group based in Fargo.
Married a lawmaker
She met Quentin Burdick in 1952, in a League of Women voters’ debate. He also was a strong supporter of women’s rights.
“We would never have gotten together had he not been,” she once said.
While Quentin Burdick went to Washington to serve in Congress, she stayed behind in Fargo with their children and gave few interviews with reporters, preferring to keep her life private. But when she was appointed to the Senate, Jocelyn Burdick added her name to legislation on pay equity and women’s health, the Equal Rights Amendment and a proposal to guarantee abortion rights.

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A new intercontinental weapon that can fly 27 times the speed of sound became operational Friday, Russia’s defense minister reported to President Vladimir Putin, bolstering the country’s nuclear strike capability.
Putin has described the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle as a technological breakthrough comparable to the 1957 Soviet launch of the first satellite. The new Russian weapon and a similar system being developed by China have troubled the United States, which has pondered defense strategies.
The Avangard is launched atop an intercontinental ballistic missile, but unlike a regular missile warhead that follows a predictable path after separation it can make sharp maneuvers in the atmosphere en route to target, making it much harder to intercept.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu informed Putin that the first missile unit equipped with the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle entered combat duty.

FILE – Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, gestures while meeting with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, left, and Chief of General Staff of Russia Valery Gerasimov in the National Defense Control Center in Moscow, Russia, Dec. 24, 2019.“I congratulate you on this landmark event for the military and the entire nation,” Shoigu said later during a conference call with top military leaders.
The Strategic Missile Forces chief, Gen. Sergei Karakayev, said during the call that the Avangard was put on duty with a unit in the Orenburg region in the southern Ural Mountains.
Putin unveiled the Avangard among other prospective weapons systems in his state-of-the-nation address in March 2018, noting that its ability to make sharp maneuvers on its way to a target will render missile defense useless.
“It heads to target like a meteorite, like a fireball,” he said at the time.
The Russian leader noted that Avangard is designed using new composite materials to withstand temperatures of up to 2,000 Celsius (3,632 Fahrenheit) resulting from a flight through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds.
The military said the Avangard is capable of flying 27 times faster than the speed of sound. It carries a nuclear weapon of up to 2 megatons.
Putin has said Russia had to develop the Avangard and other prospective weapons systems because of U.S. efforts to develop a missile defense system that he claimed could erode Russia’s nuclear deterrent. Moscow has scoffed at U.S. claims that its missile shield isn’t intended to counter Russia’s massive missile arsenals.
Putin: Russia leading the world
Earlier this week, Putin emphasized that Russia is the only country armed with hypersonic weapons. He noted that for the first time Russia is leading the world in developing an entire new class of weapons, unlike in the past when it was catching up with the U.S.
In December 2018, the Avangard was launched from the Dombarovskiy missile base in the southern Urals and successfully hit a practice target on the Kura shooting range on Kamchatka, 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) away.
Russian media reports indicated that the Avangard will first be mounted on Soviet-built RS-18B intercontinental ballistic missiles, code-named SS-19 by NATO. It is expected to be fitted to the prospective Sarmat heavy intercontinental ballistic missile after it becomes operational.
The Defense Ministry said last month it demonstrated the Avangard to a team of U.S. inspectors as part of transparency measures under the New START nuclear arms treaty with the U.S.
The Russian military previously had commissioned another hypersonic weapon of a smaller range.
The Kinzhal (Dagger), which is carried by MiG-31 fighter jets, entered service with the Russian air force last year. Putin has said the missile flies 10 times faster than the speed of sound, has a range of more than 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) and can carry a nuclear or a conventional warhead. The military said it is capable of hitting both land targets and navy ships.
China, U.S.
China has tested its own hypersonic glide vehicle, believed to be capable of traveling at least five times the speed of sound. It displayed the weapon called Dong Feng 17, or DF-17, at a military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese state.
U.S. officials have talked about putting a layer of sensors in space to more quickly detect enemy missiles, particularly the hypersonic weapons. The administration also plans to study the idea of basing interceptors in space, so the U.S. can strike incoming enemy missiles during the first minutes of flight when the booster engines are still burning.
The Pentagon also has been working on the development of hypersonic weapons in recent years, and Defense Secretary Mark Esper said in August that he believes “it’s probably a matter of a couple of years” before the U.S. has one. He has called it a priority as the military works to develop new long-range fire capabilities.
 

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Civilians on Friday packed a road leading out of a flashpoint town in northwest Syria, where two weeks of heightened regime and Russian bombardment has displaced 235,000 people.
Pick-up trucks carrying mattresses, clothes and household appliances ferried entire families out of southern Idlib province, most heading toward safer areas farther north, said an AFP correspondent on the ground.
Since mid-December, regime forces and their Russian allies have heightened bombardment on the southern edge of the final major opposition-held pocket of Syria, eight years into the country’s devastating war.
The latest violence in the jihadist-dominated Idlib region has killed scores of civilians, despite an August cease-fire deal and international calls for a de-escalation.
More than 235,000 people fled the area between Dec. 12 and 25, mostly from the beleaguered city of Maaret al-Numan which has been left “almost empty,” according to the United Nations’ humanitarian coordination agency OCHA.

An elderly Syrian woman carries a toddler as others gather at the Washukanni camp for internally displaced persons (IDP) in the mainly Kurdish northeastern Syrian province of Hasakeh, Dec. 27, 2019.OCHA spokesman David Swanson said Friday that more than 80 percent of those who have fled southern Idlib this month are women and children.
“I can’t live in the camps,” said Umm Abdo, a mother of five who recently arrived in a displacement camp in the town of Dana, north of Idlib’s provincial capital.
“The rain is very strong, and we need heating … clothes, and food,” she said, her tired eyes showing through her veil.
The Idlib region hosts some three million people, including many displaced by years of violence in other parts of Syria.
It is dominated by the country’s former al-Qaida affiliate, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, whose chief this week urged jihadists and allied rebels to head to the frontlines and battle “the Russian occupiers” and the regime.
Since Dec. 19, HTS jihadists and their rebel allies have been locked in fierce battles with regime forces around Maaret al-Numan.
Damascus loyalists have seized dozens of towns and villages from jihadists in clashes that have killed hundreds of fighters on both sides.
The advances have brought them to within four kilometers (two-and-a-half miles) of Maaret al-Numan, one of Idlib’s largest urban centers.
Winter weather
According to OCHA, ongoing battles have further amplified displacement from the area and the nearby town of Saraqeb.
“People from Saraqab and its eastern countryside are now fleeing in anticipation of fighting directly affecting their communities next,” it said.

FILE – Trucks carry belongings of people fleeing from Maaret al-Numan, in northern Idlib, Syria, Dec. 24, 2019.The mass displacement could not come at a worse time, with heavy rainfall flooding squalid camps for the displaced.
“Being forced to move in winter months exacerbates existing vulnerabilities, particularly of the women, children, elderly, people with disabilities and other vulnerable groups,” OCHA said.
Since mid-December, the fighting has killed nearly 80 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.
U.S. President Donald Trump reacted to the violence in a tweet on Thursday, saying that “Russia, Syria, and Iran are killing, or on their way to killing, thousands of innocent civilians in Idlib Province.”
He added that Turkey was “working hard to stop this carnage.”
Humanitarian aid
The escalation has forced aid groups to suspend operations in the area, exasperating already dire humanitarian conditions, OCHA said.
Idlib’s residents mainly depend on critical cross-border aid, which came under threat last week after Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have extended such deliveries for a year.

Supplies are scattered outside tents of displaced Syrians, who fled from government forces’ advance on Maaret al-Numan in the south of Idlib province, at a camp for the displaced near the town of Dana near the border with Turkey, Dec. 27, 2019.The move raised fears that vital U.N.-funded aid could stop entering Idlib from January unless an alternative agreement is reached.
The Syrian regime pulled out of its last outposts in Idlib province in 2015, following fierce battles with rebels and al-Qaida-affiliated jihadists.
The Damascus regime, which now controls 70 percent of Syria, has repeatedly vowed to take back the region.
Backed by Moscow, Damascus launched a blistering offensive against Idlib in April, killing around 1,000 civilians and displacing more than 400,000 people.
Despite a cease-fire announced in August, the bombardment has continued, prompting Turkey this week to press for a fresh cease-fire deal during talks in Moscow.
France on Tuesday called for an “immediate de-escalation,” warning of deteriorating humanitarian conditions.
The war in Syria has killed more than 370,000 people and displaced millions since it began with anti-government demonstrations brutally crushed by security forces.
 

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Republican attempts to require photo identification to vote in North Carolina are being thwarted again by judges hearing arguments that the mandate is tainted by bias that would deter black and Latino residents.
A federal court announced that next week U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs will formally block a photo ID requirement scheduled to begin in 2020. Unless the upcoming preliminary injunction is successfully appealed, the requirement will be halted until a lawsuit filed by the state NAACP and others is resolved.
Thursday’s short written notice from the federal court in Winston-Salem previewed Biggs’ order because state election officials were planning to expand efforts to educate voters about the ID law within days. Although the mandate would be carried out beginning with the March 3 primary, the requirement would actually start in just a few weeks with mail-in absentee ballot filers, who also would have to provide an ID copy.
The mandate identified several types of qualifying photo IDs and allowed people lacking one to get a free ID card or to fill out a form while voting explaining their “reasonable impediment” to obtaining one.
GOP leaders in charge of the legislature have been trying for most of the decade to advance voter ID, saying that more than 30 states require it and it builds confidence in elections. Data show voter impersonation is rare, however. 
The voting pool — currently 6.8 million registered voters — is critical in a closely divided presidential battleground state where statewide races are often competitive between the major parties.
Voter ID part of 2016 elections
Voter ID was actually carried out in North Carolina’s 2016 primary elections as the result of a 2013 law. But a federal appeals court struck down several portions of the law in July 2016, saying photo ID and other voting restrictions were approved with intentional racial discrimination in mind.
Republicans strongly disagreed with that decision and put a constitutional amendment on the November 2018 ballot — a strategy designed to give the idea more legal and popular standing. The amendment passed with 55% of the vote. The legislature approved a separate law in December 2018 detailing how to implement that amendment. Lawsuits challenging that new law were filed immediately.
Lawyers for the state and local NAACP chapters told Biggs in a court brief that the latest version of voter ID is a “barely disguised duplicate” of the 2013 voter ID law and “carries the same discriminatory intent as its predecessor,” likely violating the U.S. Constitution.
The new rules allow additional government IDs to meet the mandate, including public and private university cards. But they still prevent government IDs for public assistance programs from being used, disproportionately affecting African Americans, the NAACP said.
Waiting on formal order
The actual reasons for Biggs issuing the injunction — and whether the legislature could pass a law altering the rules to resolve her concerns — won’t be known until the formal order is released.
State NAACP President the Rev. Anthony Spearman praised Biggs’ decision, calling the 2018 measure “the latest bad-faith attempt in a string of failed efforts by the (North Carolina) General Assembly to impede the right to vote of African Americans and Latinos in this state, and to blunt the force of the true will of the people.”
Republican House Speaker Tim Moore of Cleveland County criticized the notice Friday as a “last-minute attempt by an activist federal judge to overturn the will of North Carolina voters.” He said the ruling should be ”immediately appealed” by the State Board of Elections, which is a defendant in the case. 
The board is composed of three Democrats and two Republicans, all appointed by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. Although a voter ID opponent, Cooper is also named a lawsuit defendant because of his position as governor.
Appeal plans on hold
Lawyers from the state Department of Justice represented the board in court to attempt to uphold the 2018 voter ID law. They argued that the mandate was improved to address previous concerns of bias and the plaintiffs failed to show it was enacted with discriminatory intent. Cooper vetoed the December 2018 law, but two Democratic legislators joined all Repubilcans voting to override the veto.
The department declined to comment Friday about a possible appeal as it awaits Biggs’ full order, said Laura Brewer, a spokeswoman for Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein. Biggs prevented Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger from officially entering the case, saying the board was making an adequate defense.
Two other lawsuits challenging the voter ID mandate or the constitutional amendment are pending in state courts.

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An airliner with 98 people on board crashed in Kazakhstan shortly after takeoff early Friday, killing at least 12 and injuring 54 others, authorities said.                                
Kazakhstan’s Civil Aviation Committee said in a statement the Bek Air plane hit a concrete fence and a two-story building after takeoff from Almaty International Airport.
Local authorities had earlier put the death toll at 15, but the Interior Ministry of the Central Asian nation later revised the figure downward, without giving an explanation.

Flight 2100, a Fokker-100 aircraft, was heading to the capital, Nur-Sultan, formerly known as Astana, when it lost attitude at 7:22 a.m. local time.
Authorities say all Bek Air flights in Kazakhstan were immediately suspended pending the investigation of the crash.
The manufacturer of the Fokker-100, a medium-sized, twin-turbofan jet airliner, went bankrupt in 1996 and production of the plane stopped the following year.
The cause of the crash was unclear, but the central Asian country’s deputy prime minister, Roman Sklyar, said authorities were looking into pilot error or technical failure.  
Upwards of 1,000 first responders were working at the crash site, which was covered in snow. Dozens of people showed up at a local blood bank to donate.
           
The government said it would pay families of the victims about $10,000 apiece.
                      
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev ordered an inspection of all airlines in the country, along with the aviation infrastructure. Eighteen passenger airlines and four cargo carriers are registered in Kazakhstan.
           
 
 

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Authorities in eastern Pakistan announced Friday counterterrorism forces have captured five suspected al-Qaida operatives planning attacks on security officials.  
The operation in Punjab province targeted a facility serving as a media cell and a financing network for militants linked to al-Qaida’s regional affiliate, al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), the provincial counterterrorism department said in a statement.  
It described the five detainees as important members of AQIS, saying one of them was a close aide of the militant group’s current “operational commander” based in neighboring Afghanistan and was coordinating terrorist activities on both sides of the border.  
Officials said the raid in Gujranwala city also seized laptops with encrypted data, mobile phones, a printing press, suicide vests, explosives, weapons, including five Russian-made Kalashnikov assault rifles, ammunition, cash and maps of “sensitive” places in Punjab.  
The AQIS cell had recently relocated from Karachi, the country’s largest city and commercial center.
Pakistani military forces have conducted major operations against militant strongholds over the past decade in the northwestern remote tribal districts on the Afghan border, clearing most of them and killing thousands of militants.   
Officials say retaliatory suicide bombings and other terrorism-related incidents have killed tens of thousands of Pakistanis, including security forces. The security crackdown, however, has significantly reduced militant violence across Pakistan.
Militants who fled the security action in border areas have reportedly moved to other parts of Pakistan, including the country’s richest and most populous province of Punjab.
The United States designated AQI as a global terrorist organization in 2016. It reportedly operates in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Myanmar and Bangladesh, claiming responsibility for attacks in the region.  
AQIS’s Indian-born chief, Asim Omar, was killed in September in southern Afghanistan in a joint operation by Afghan and U.S. security forces.  
The U.S. military, in a unilateral operation in 2011, located and killed al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden deep inside Pakistan.

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A group of protesters in New Delhi was beaten and shoved into buses by police on Friday as they attempted to demonstrate against a new citizenship law that has triggered nationwide protests in recent weeks.
About two dozen people gathered near an Uttar Pradesh state government building in the capital to protest deaths and allegations of police brutality during protests in the north Indian state.
Paramilitary and police forces were deployed and the internet was shut down in Muslim-majority districts in Uttar Pradesh, where more than a dozen people have been killed and more than 1,000 people arrested in the protests since the law was passed by Parliament earlier this month.

The Citizenship Amendment Act provides an expedited path to citizenship for Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Christians, Jains and Parsees from Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, but not Muslims.
Critics say it violates India’s secular constitution, and have filed challenges with the Supreme Court. Tens of thousands of protesters have taken to India’s streets to call for its revocation.
Twenty-three people have been killed nationwide in the protests, the first major roadblock for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda since his party’s landslide reelection earlier this year.

Modi has defended the citizenship law and accused the opposition of pushing the country into a “fear psychosis.”
Sixteen of the deaths occurred in Uttar Pradesh, according to state government spokesman Awanish Awasthi. Muslims account for 20% of the state’s 200 million people. The state government is controlled by Modi’s governing party. Government officials have repeatedly said security forces haven’t killed anyone.
Security drones buzzed over western Uttar Pradesh as authorities sought to head off protests, which turned violent after last week’s Friday prayers. Mobile internet was blocked in about a third of the state, including in parts of the capital, Lucknow, where one person was killed in a protest a week ago.
Elsewhere in New Delhi, security forces surrounded a rally at one of India’s largest mosques, where a protest march last Friday ended in violence after a car was set on fire in front of a police station.
In Mumbai, India’s financial capital, authorities denied protesters permission to conduct a 6-kilometer (3.7-mile) march. Elsewhere in the city, Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party held a rally in support of the law.
Mamata Banerjee, the chief government official in West Bengal state, pledged to continue leading daily protests in the state capital of Kolkata against the law until it is withdrawn, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

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French union activists disrupted two of the country’s eight oil refineries Friday as part of nationwide strikes against a higher retirement age that have lasted for 23 days, the longest such walkout in France in decades.
The current action, at more than three weeks, is now longer than a 1995 transport workers strike that looms large in the nation’s modern history. The strike under Jacques Chirac’s presidency also was over pension reform and ended after 22 days w hen the government backed down.
This time, President Emmanuel Macron appears determined to push through the retirement overhaul and raise the official pension eligibility age to 64. But the government is holding negotiations with unions and offering compromise measures to airline pilots, forensic police and other groups.
The most determined unions are keeping up the pressure. Protests caused disruptions at oil refineries Friday in a region southeast of Paris and in the region that includes the major Mediterranean port of Marseille.
France’s interior minister insisted the disruptions would not cause gasoline shortages and urged drivers not to resort to panic buying.
The strike halted about half of the country’s high-speed trains on Friday, while tourists and Parisians squeezed into scarcer-than-usual buses and subway trains.
Unions called this year’s strike Dec. 5 against a pension reform plan they see as threatening the French welfare state. Macron argues the changes would make the pension system more fair and keep it out of debt.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Thursday won a resounding victory over Likud challenger Gideon Saar, winning more than 72% of the vote. The vote gives Netanyahu a boost going into Israel’s third general election in a year, scheduled for early March.
“This is a huge victory! Thank you Likud members for your trust, support and love,” Netanyahu said in a message to supporters, vowing to lead Likud  “to a great victory in the upcoming [national] elections and continue to lead the State of Israel to unprecedented achievements.”
Saar called Netanyahu to concede defeat and said he would continue to support Likud in the coming election campaign. Saar’s supporters had said that if he reached 30% of the vote, it would be a big victory. He fell short, but not my much.
 “The contest was vital to the Likud and its democratic character,” said Saar.  “My decision to run was right and necessary. Whoever isn’t prepared to take a chance for the path he believes in, will never win.”
Saar was seen as the first serious challenger to Netanyahu in the 10 years that he has led the ruling Likud party. Netanyahu also recently became Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, overtaking the first prime minister, David Ben Gurion. The overwhelming victory seemed to show that the fact that Netanyahu has been indicted in three corruption cases has not dampened his Likud support.
In the last two election campaigns, Netanyahu has run a campaign in the style of U.S. President Donald Trump, denigrating the media and the justice system as making up “fake-news” allegations against him. He described investigations against him as ridiculous, repeating “there will be nothing (no indictment) because there is nothing.”
Since the November indictment, he has continued to insist he is innocent, and most analysts say it is Netanyahu who dragged Israel into an unprecedented third election in a year because he wants to gain strength before trying to get immunity.
“All Netanyahu is concerned about is his personal interest – it’s why we went through elections in April and September, and why we are going to a third election,” Gayil Talshir, a political science professor at Hebrew University said in an interview. “He needs 61 hands in the Knesset (the parliament) to vote for immunity for him. He needs each and every one of the right-wing members of the Knesset.”
In the past two elections, neither Netanyahu nor his former army chief Benny Gantz, who started a new party called Blue and White, was able to put together a coalition of 61 seats. Gantz had said he would not join a national unity coalition with Netanyahu at the head, although he is open to another Likud leader.
During negotiations after the September election, Netanyahu offered to step down after six months, but Gantz reportedly did not trust him to keep his promise.
Latest polls show that Blue and White has gained some strength but that neither Likud nor Blue and White can form a coalition. Netanyahu is also hoping that the next election will strengthen some of the right-wing parties who would be his natural coalition partners.
According to the Israeli electoral system, a party needs a minimum of four seats to enter the Knesset. The law was passed to prevent small one- and two-seat parties from entering the Knesset. In last April’s election, the Jewish Home party of Defense Minister Naftali Bennet and former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked fell just 1,500 votes short of the threshold number. For Netanyahu, it was four potential seats lost to the right wing.
Beyond strengthening his own base, Netanyahu hopes to encourage right-wing voters to come out and vote. In the Likud party primary, just under 50% of registered Likud voters came out, partly because of stormy weather. Netanyahu is worried that the third election in a year has left the Israeli public, which traditionally has high rates of voting, apathetic and voter turnout will decrease.
Although Netanyahu trounced Gideon Saar, the fact that anyone was willing to challenge Netanyahu may be the first chink in his armor. For the past 10 years, Netanyahu has completely dominated Likud.
It is not yet clear when Netanyahu’s corruption trial will begin. He has insisted that he can both be prime minister and defend himself in court at the same time.   
 

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Singer-songwriter, record producer, philanthropist, and actor, Jon Bon Jovi the founder and front man of the Grammy Award-winning rock band Bon Jovi, which was formed in 1983. Bon Jovi has released 14 studio albums and has sold over 130 million albums worldwide and he has released two solo albums. Earlier this month Bon Jovi released their latest song, “Unbroken” which will be featured in the forthcoming documentary “To Be of Service.” The song is a compelling anthem that shines a spotlight on the thousands of veterans living with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

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