Media captionIvanka Trump: “Harassment can never be tolerated”
Ivanka Trump, daughter and adviser to the US president, has told a Tokyo summit that sexual harassment of women should “never be tolerated”.
She also called for boosting equal participation in “traditionally male-dominated sectors of our economy”.
Officials blamed the many empty seats in the hall on security restrictions.
Ms Trump’s father has been accused by multiple women of sexual harassment and assault, all of which his representatives have denied.
Accusations of groping, forced kissing, and walking unannounced into changing areas at beauty pageants were made against Donald Trump when he was running for president.
At the World Assembly for Women in Tokyo, Ms Trump said: “All too often, our workplace culture fails to treat women with appropriate respect.
“This takes many forms, including harassment, which can never be tolerated,” she added.
She urged the world should boost women participation in the so-called STEM fields – science, technology, engineering and maths.
And she pointed out that men are not referred to as “working men” in the same way women are called “working women”.
“It is my hope that by the time my daughter Arabella grows into a woman, she will not be defined by whether she works inside or outside the home,” she said.
Her speech in Tokyo comes days before her father’s first trip to Asia since taking office.
A Washington post reporter at the event tweeted a picture of empty rows of seats.
Reports said officials had blamed tight security restrictions, but there were no reports of long queues.
Speaking at the same summit, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said his government was also trying to bring more women into the workforce.
Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption Japan struggles to break up traditional gender roles
“We’ve put our full strength into creating an environment where it’s easy for women to work,” Mr Abe said in his opening address.
Despite these efforts, however, Japan’s gender gap remains wide. The country ranked 114 out of 144 in the World Economic Forum’s 2017 Global Gender Gap report, which was released as Ms Trump prepared to speak.
Image copyrightLibyan Interior MinistryImage caption Libya’s interior ministry issued this photo of Hashem Abedi in May
The Libyan militia holding the brother of Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi has said it is “ready to co-operate” with the UK’s extradition request.
Hashem Abedi was arrested in the country shortly after the suicide attack that killed 22 people.
Greater Manchester Police has issued an arrest warrant in relation to murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to cause an explosion.
The militia group had earlier refused to consider the request.
Mr Abedi is being held by the Deterrence Force (Rada), a counter-terrorism group allied to the UN-backed government in Tripoli.
A spokesman said Mr Abedi would be sent to Britain if Libya’s attorney general approved his transfer.
Image caption Salman Abedi was born in Manchester on New Year’s Eve 1994
Salman killed 22 people and injured hundreds more at an Ariana Grande concert on 22 May.
Both brothers had travelled to Libya in April, before Salman returned alone, carrying out the attack.
His brother, then aged 20, was arrested in Tripoli by members of the Rada Special Deterrence Force a day after the bombing.
Rana Jawad, BBC North Africa correspondent
Observers are sceptical that an extradition request will be followed through.
If Libya’s track record in ignoring international arrest warrants from the ICC is anything to go by, it makes the voluntary transfer of Hashem Abedi from Libya to the UK highly unlikely.
Appearances in a country fraught with ideological, political and military divisions are often prioritised because actions have wider implications on the ground that usually involve unruly armed groups.
The more likely scenario is that they will eventually expedite trial proceedings against Mr Abedi on home soil.
Prime Minister Theresa May’s official spokesman said: “We are determined to do everything in our power to ensure that those suspected of being responsible for the Manchester attack are brought back to face justice in the UK.
“The home secretary continues to receive regular updates and we will work closely with the Crown Prosecution Service, police and Libyan authorities to try to secure the return of Abedi to the UK.”
Image caption Top (left to right): Lisa Lees, Alison Howe, Georgina Callender, Kelly Brewster, John Atkinson, Jane Tweddle, Marcin Klis – Middle (left to right): Angelika Klis, Courtney Boyle, Saffie Roussos, Olivia Campbell-Hardy, Martyn Hett, Michelle Kiss, Philip Tron, Elaine McIver – Bottom (left to right): Eilidh MacLeod, Wendy Fawell, Chloe Rutherford, Liam Allen-Curry, Sorrell Leczkowski, Megan Hurley, Nell Jones
Image copyrightAl Nahar TVImage caption Doaa Salah dressed to appear pregnant when she addressed single motherhood on her show
An Egyptian TV presenter has been sentenced to three years in jail after she discussed ways of becoming pregnant outside a conventional marriage.
Doaa Salah, a presenter on Al-Nahar TV, asked if her viewers had considered having sex before marriage, and also suggested a woman could marry briefly to have children before divorcing.
She was charged and convicted with outraging public decency.
Ms Salah was also ordered to pay 10,000 Egyptian pounds (£430) in compensation.
The authorities said the ideas in the programme “threatened the fabric of Egyptian life”, the EFE news agency reports.
Sex before marriage is widely regarded as unacceptable in socially conservative Egypt.
Ms Salah suggested that a potential husband could be paid for taking part in a short-lived marriage, and also spoke about how sperm donation is an accepted method in Western countries – but not in Egypt.
She was suspended from her presenting job for three months in the aftermath of the broadcast, before legal action was taken against her.
The three-year sentence follows an initial verdict which is open to an appeal.
Note: This story is auto-generated from ‘BBC News’ syndicated feed and has not been edited by Africa Prime News staff.
There’s a sense in some quarters that white farmers are being targeted in particular.
Many have claimed in recent weeks that South Africa’s farmers are more likely to be murdered than the average South African.
Neither of the claims above is supported by reliable data. So what does the evidence say?
More farm murders
According to the best available statistics, farm murders are at their highest level since 2010-11.
South Africa’s Police Service says 74 people were murdered on farms between April 2016 and March 2017, up from 58 in the previous year.
That’s broadly in line with figures collected by the Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU). They rely on media reports, social media posts and tip-offs from their members, which means they don’t pick up every murder or attack that takes place.
They counted 64 murders on farms in 2015, 71 in 2016, and 68 in the first nine months of 2017 alone.
It is worth noting that both the police and the TAU are counting murdered farmers, farm workers and visitors to farms – irrespective of race.
But a rise in the number of farm murders doesn’t tell us anything about whether farmers are more at risk than average South African.
Image copyrightAFPImage caption The TAU says most farm murder victims are white. The Police don’t record farm murders by race.
To do that, we need to calculate the murder rate – the chance of being murdered.
It’s easy enough to tell you what the average is for South Africa.
Are farmers at greater risk than this national average?
How many farmers?
The truth is, we don’t know. We can’t calculate a meaningful murder rate for farmers, because we don’t know how many there are.
Do we include all 810,000 people employed in agriculture? That gives a farm murder rate of 9.1 per 100,000 – much lower than the South African average.
Or, do we restrict ourselves to the 32,375 commercial farmers counted in the country’s last agricultural census in 2007?
That’s what AfriForum, a group that campaigns for the interests of Afrikaners in South Africa, appears to have done.
It has estimated a farm murder rate of 156 per 100,000 that has been widely quoted in recent days.
It appears to be calculated as follows.
First, take the 50 murdered farmers counted by the TAU in 2016 (which excludes murders of family members, employees and visitors).
Then, divide by 32,000 – an estimate of the total number of farmers, based on the 2007 figure.
There are problems with this approach.
First, the data is very old, so the number of farmers may be different now.
Second, to exclude murdered family members, employees, and visitors to the farm from such an analysis misses part of the picture of what is happening on South African farms – but we don’t know how many of those people there are.
Third, the 2007 census did not include small, non-commercial farms – but some of the murders counted in the figures did take place on smaller farms. By leaving them out, the murder rate comes out higher than it should.
Can we talk about race?
This also helps explain why it’s impossible to say whether white farmers are more at risk than black farmers – or more at risk than the population at large.
We simply don’t know what proportion of people on South Africa’s farms is white.
The closest we get is the 2016 Community Survey of agricultural households. Of the nearly 200,000 households whose agricultural activity takes place on farmland, about 54,000 have a white person at the head of the household.
The problem is, we don’t know how many people are in each household or how many of the households are racially mixed.
So we don’t know how many white people there are on South Africa’s farms. And that means we can’t work out how likely those white people are to be murdered.
Guesstimation
We could try and guesstimate, by making various assumptions about how many farmers there are now, how many are white and how many people live on their farms.
But as they explain in their analysis, small changes to those assumptions can make huge differences to the estimated murder rate. On some sets of assumptions, the farm murder rate is no higher than the national average.
Image copyrightTwitterImage caption For a short time visitors could only see a message that read: “Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!”
US President Donald Trump’s Twitter account briefly vanished on Thursday but has since been restored, the social media company said.
An employee deactivated the @realdonaldtrump account, it said, clarifying that it had been their last day in the job.
The account was down for 11 minutes and Twitter is now investigating.
Tweets from Mr Trump, who has 41.7 million followers, have frequently caused controversy.
The latest incident has sparked debate about the security of the president’s account, given the potential consequences of posts falsely attributed to Mr Trump being published.
However, @POTUS, the official account of the US president, was unaffected.
On Thursday evening, visitors to Mr Trump’s page for a short time could only see a message that read “Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!”
Image copyrightTwitterImage caption Donald Trump has been actively using Twitter to promote his policies and attack his opponents
After the account was restored, Mr Trump’s first tweet was about the Republican Party’s tax cuts plan.
Twitter said it was investigating the problem and taking steps to avoid it happening again.
It later said: “Through our investigation we have learned that this was done by a Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee’s last day. We are conducting a full internal review.”
‘Bing, bing, bing’
Mr Trump joined Twitter in March 2009 and he has tweeted more than 36,000 times.
He has been actively using the social media platform to promote his policies and also attack his political opponents both during the presidential campaign in 2016 and since taking office in January.
In one interview he said that when someone said something about him, he was able to go “bing, bing, bing on Twitter” – and take care of it.
Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption Trump displays the proposed new ‘postcard’ tax form
Republicans have unveiled details of a sweeping tax plan, aimed at slashing rates for businesses and lowering inheritance taxes.
The proposal would lower the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20%, while retaining the top individual rate for the wealthiest at 39.5%.
It eliminates a popular mortgage interest deduction for new home loans of $500,000 (£380,000) or more.
Delivering on the plan is a priority for Republicans and the president.
Republicans said the bill, which is estimated to cost about $1.51tn over a decade, is transformational.
They say it will make US companies more competitive and simplify the tax-filing process for the average American family.
“This is our chance to make sure that generations to come don’t just get by, they get ahead in this country,” House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said.
The most costly part of the plan is the reduction of the corporate rate.
Republicans said the bill also provides “relief” for ordinary Americans.
They said the changes will save the average family of four about $1,182 on their tax bill.
President Donald Trump and other Republican party leaders are hoping to win approval of the bill by the end of the year.
Mr Trump called it a “big, beautiful Christmas present” for families.
But Democrats say the plan favours corporations and the wealthy.
Representative Nancy Pelosi, who leads Democrats in the House, slammed the bill as “half-baked” and said it would raise taxes on the middle class.
Key elements
The standard tax deduction increases from $6,350 to $12,000 for individuals, and from $12,700 to $24,000 for married couples
Estate tax exemption nearly doubles to $11.2m, up from $5.49m, and will be eliminated by 2024
Alternative Minimum Tax – which ensures the wealthy cannot entirely avoid taxes by taking advantage of deductions – will be repealed
Corporate profits from overseas will no longer be taxed, but a minimum 10% tax will be placed on US foreign subsidiaries
Child tax credit expands from $1,000 to $1,600 per child
Despite speculation, there is no change to a limit on pre-tax contributions to 401(k) retirement funds
Federal deductions for state and local income and sales taxes will be eliminated
Local property taxes can be deducted from federal income, but are capped at $10,000
Murky details
By Anthony Zurcher, BBC News, Washington
The Republican party’s outline of its new tax plan lists almost as many items that are going to stay the same as are being changed. That’s the nature of tax reform – every deduction and loophole has a group that will fight to preserve it.
Republicans will boast that tax-deferred retirement plans, the credit for low-income workers and the charitable donations deduction are untouched.
They’re playing a dangerous game, however, by targeting one cherished middle-class deduction – for interest on home mortgages. The powerful homebuilding lobby will wage a pitched effort to squash Republican hopes.
The tax proposal is framed as geared toward the working and middle classes – and there is some help there – but its central focus is a corporate tax reduction that, while popular among the party’s corporate base, doesn’t excite the general public.
Republicans will try to push the legislation through much the way they did healthcare reform – by keeping details murky and scheduling quick votes. Forces are already aligning against it, however, and Democrats are ready to paint the plan as a sop to the rich.
Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have a lot riding on a successful effort, but the road ahead is far from easy.
Who are the winners and losers?
Winners: Corporations and businesses
The bill slashes the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20%. That’s expected to reduce revenue by almost $1.5tn from 2018-2027.
The bill also sets a 25% top tax rate for income from certain businesses that is taxed at the personal rate – a further $500bn reduction in revenue.
Winners: Wealthy heirs
Under current law, inheritances over $5.49m face a 40% tax rate. The Republican proposal would immediately double the amount excluded from taxes to $11.2m and repeal it entirely in 2024.
The committee expects that to reduce revenue by $172.2bn through 2027.
Winners: Some families
The plan also reduces the number of tax brackets to four from seven.
For married couples, income up to $24,000 would not be taxed under the proposal; income between $24,000 and $90,000 would face a 12% rate; earnings between $90,000 and $260,000 would be taxed at 25%; while income between $260,000 and $1m would fall in the 35% bracket. Income over $1m would face the top 39.5% rate.
For single filers, the bill sets the income thresholds at half those amounts, but the 35% rate would start at $200,000.
How those changes would affect a tax bill depends on the particulars of a person’s income, residence and what benefits they claim.
In theory, for joint-filers, the proposal would mean the tax rate on income up to about $76,000 would fall from 15% under current law to 12%, while the tax rate on income between $76,000 and $90,00 would drop from 25% to 12%.
The tax rate on income between about $471,000 and $1m would also fall for joint-filers, from 39.5% under current law to 35%.
Losers: Wealthy homeowners in Democratic states
Current law permits taxpayers to deduct interest paid on mortgages up to $1m. The Republican proposal would cap that at $500,000.
Trade groups for home builders and realtors oppose the shift, but the change is favoured by some left-leaning groups, including the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption Donna Brazile says the deal was “not a criminal act,” but “compromised the party’s integrity”
The Democratic Party’s ex-interim chief has accused Hillary Clinton of seizing control of the party in exchange for funding during the 2016 campaign.
Donna Brazile alleges in her new book that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) signed a deal with Clinton’s team to keep the party financially afloat.
In exchange, the Clinton campaign would control the DNC’s “finances, strategy and all the money raised”, she said.
She claimed the deal showed favouritism toward Mrs Clinton over Bernie Sanders.
The DNC was meant to be neutral in the contest between Mrs Clinton and her Democratic primary season challenger, Mr Sanders.
Supporters of Mr Sanders have long insisted that the DNC was biased against him.
But Mr Sanders’ 2016 campaign also signed its own joint fundraising agreement with the DNC.
In excerpts from Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House, published by Politico magazine, Ms Brazile wrote that Mrs Clinton’s “campaign had the DNC on life support, giving it money every month to meet its basic expenses”.
“The funding arrangement was not illegal but it sure looked unethical,” she added.
“This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party’s integrity.”
Ms Brazile came under fire last year after the anti-secrecy website released hacked DNC emails that revealed she had notified the Clinton campaign in advance of a question she would be asked at a town hall-style event hosted by CNN.
Former acting Democratic National Committee head Donna Brazile just confirmed the worst suspicions of many Bernie Sanders supporters.
Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, she says, had effective control over the DNC before any ballots were cast in the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries. Starting in August 2015, the Clinton team controlled the committee’s “finances, strategy and all the money raised”.
It had say over staff hiring and veto power over press releases and mailings.
This is not, as some have argued, proof that the primary process was “rigged” against the Vermont senator, who finished a surprisingly strong second to (but still millions of votes behind) Hillary Clinton when the primaries had concluded.
Ms Brazile searched, but could find no evidence of tampering, of tilting or of twisting. But it’s also clear, if the long-time Democratic operative is to be believed, that the Democratic committee was tied at the hip to the Clinton forces – a set-up that occupies ethically questionable ground.
A reckoning is coming, and the blame does not rest solely at Mrs Clinton’s feet either.
Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption Mrs Clinton has blamed Mr Sanders for failing to unite progressives behind her in the general election
Her campaign gained control and influence over the Democratic committee in large part because the Democrats were deeply in debt and their operation was ineffective – a condition that developed in large part because Barack Obama allowed it to happen.
Over the course of his presidency, he has been accused of neglecting the party’s infrastructure, allowing atrophy at the state and local level, and leading to massive down-ballot defeats during mid-term on his watch.
As the top Democratic officeholder, it was the president’s responsibility to ensure Democratic vitality – and the record, at the ballot box and in party coffers, paints a dismal picture.
Ms Brazile also has her own reputation to mend, as Russia-sponsored DNC email hacks showed she once shared Democratic town hall questions with Clinton staff in advance.
Her disclosures may be as much about rehabilitating her reputation as they are about exposing misdeeds or selling books.
These revelations will only exacerbate the fault lines that have formed within the Democratic Party between more moderate officeholders and the populist, pro-Bernie legions. It goes without saying, as well, that Donald Trump will at some point latch onto the story and do his best to sow discord in the ranks of his opponents.
As the midterm elections loom just a year away, Democrats need to present a united front if they want to rebound from 2016 disappointment and capitalise on poll numbers that show widespread dissatisfaction with the Trump presidency.
On Thursday they took a big step backward.
US President Donald Trump weighed in on Ms Brazile’s accusations late on Thursday, saying in a tweet she had “stated the DNC RIGGED the system” to tip the Democratic nomination in Mrs Clinton’s favour.
However, Ms Brazile never said that Mrs Clinton “rigged” the system.
Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption Rick Perry said electricity will “shine righteousness” on acts of sexual assault
US Energy Secretary Rick Perry has said an increase in the use of fossil fuels in Africa may prevent sexual assault.
Speaking in Washington, he said “from the standpoint of sexual assault” light would shine “righteousness…on those types of acts”.
Mr Perry also said electricity would stop people from reading by the light of fires, which have toxic fumes.
His comments have been criticised, with one environmental group describing them as “blatantly untrue”.
‘Resign immediately’
Mr Perry, a known climate change sceptic, said on Thursday: “From the standpoint of sexual assault. When the lights are on, when you have light that shines, the righteousness, if you will, on those types of acts”.
“So from the standpoint of how you really affect people’s lives, fossil fuels is [sic] going to play a role in that”, he added.
Rick Perry gaffes
“A broken clock is right once a day.” – denying reports he was about to quit the White House race in 2015
“George W Bush did an incredible job in the presidency, defending us from freedom.” – to NBC in 2010
“Juarez is reported to be the most dangerous city in America.” – in 2011 on a city that’s in Mexico
“I’m more Jewish than you think I am. I read the part of the Bible that said the Jews are God’s chosen people.” – interview with the New York Times
“I may have the genetic coding that I’m inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that, and I look at the homosexual issue in the same way.” – to the Commonwealth Club of California in 2014
“From time to time there are going to be things that occur that are acts of God that cannot be prevented.” – on the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill
Mr Perry was discussing a recent trip to Africa at an event hosted by NBC News and Axios. He told journalists that he had met a young girl who said she read by the light of a fire.
“A young girl told me to my face, one of the reasons electricity is so important to me is not only because I’m not going to have to try and read by the light of a fire and have those fumes literally killing people”, he said.
“The secretary was making the important point that while many Americans take electricity for granted there are people in other countries who are impacted by their lack of electricity,” Shaylyn Hynes said.
The group’s director, Michael Brune, said in a statement: “To suggest that fossil fuel development will decrease sexual assault is not only blatantly untrue, it is an inexcusable attempt to minimise a serious and pervasive issue.”
“Rick Perry’s attempt to exploit this struggle to justify further dangerous fossil fuel development is unacceptable. He should resign from his position immediately before he causes any more damage.”
Mr Perry, a former governor of Texas, became known for gaffes made during his 2012 bid for the US presidency.
He dropped out of the race after famously failing to recall the name of the agency he now heads, which he said he would abolish if elected.
As energy secretary, in July this year he was duped by Russian pranksters who made him believe he was speaking to the Ukrainian prime minister.
Note: This story is auto-generated from BBC syndicated feed and has not been edited by AFRICA PRIME NEWS
