Attackers have detonated explosives before storming the offices of the Save the Children charity in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad.

At least 11 people are reported injured so far. It is believed about 50 staff were in the building at the time.

A suspected suicide car bomb blast began the assault, with the gunmen now said to be using machine guns and RPGs from higher floors in the building.

No group has yet said it is behind Wednesday’s attack.

What’s the latest on the attack?

It started at about 09:10 local time (04:40 GMT) when a suicide attacker detonated a car bomb at the entrance to the Save the Children compound, Ataullah Khogyani, a provincial government spokesperson, told the BBC.

An eyewitness who was inside the compound at the time told AFP news agency that he saw a gunman hitting the main gate with a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG).

Images showed a huge plume of thick black smoke rising from the compound.

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Local journalist Bilal Sarwary said police had told him Afghan commandos were at the scene and that the attackers were on the upper floors of the building, using heavy machine guns, grenades and RPGs.

He says initial reports suggest there are two or three attackers. He also says a doctor has told him at least one Afghan soldier has been killed.

One WhatsApp message, reported by AFP to be from an employee, read: “I can hear two attackers… They are looking for us. Pray for us… Inform the security forces.”

There are several other aid agencies in the area, along with government offices.

Who is behind it?

Uncertain as yet.

Jalalabad, near the border with Pakistan, is often targeted by Taliban militants but it is also a stronghold for the Islamic State group, whose fighters have been active there since 2015.

The latest attack comes days after Taliban gunmen stormed a luxury hotel in Kabul killing at least 22 people, mostly foreigners.

But in a Twitter message the group denied carrying out the Jalalabad attack.

What has Save the Children said?

An emailed statement from a Save the Children spokesperson said the group was “devastated” at the news of the attack, adding: “Our primary concern is for the safety and security of our staff.”

It added: “We are awaiting further information from our team and cannot comment further at this time.”

The UN’s mission in Afghanistan said: “Attacks directed at civilians or aid organisations are clear violations of international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes.”

What is Save the Children’s Afghan work?

The charity has been working in Afghanistan since 1976. It currently runs programmes across 16 provinces in Afghanistan.

According to the aid agency, more than 700,000 children in Afghanistan have been reached over the years through its efforts.

The organisation says it aims to provide better access to education, healthcare and essential supplies to children across the globe.

Are charity groups targeted in Afghanistan?

They continue to work under tough conditions in the country, facing regular attacks and kidnappings.

The Red Cross announced in October that it was drastically reducing its presence in Afghanistan after seven of its staff were killed in attacks in 2017.

Attacks over the years include:

• May 2017: Attackers storm a guesthouse run by a Swedish NGO, Operation Mercy, killing a German woman and Afghan guard
• July 2014: Gunmen shoot dead two Finnish women working for a Christian aid charity, the International Assistance Mission (IAM), in the western city of Herat
• October 2010: Kidnapped UK aid worker Linda Norgrove is killed in a rescue attempt
• August 2010: 10 members of an eye care team working for IAM are shot dead in Nuristan province

Additionally, the US bombing of a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Kunduz in October 2015 killed 22 people.

Prime minister Narendra Modi is in Davos to hard sell India as the world’s most attractive investment destination. But suppressed crude oil prices—the big joker in the pack that has in recent years helped India fix its finances—may spring an ugly surprise in 2018.

Fuel consumption in India is set to double this year, after having been throttled last year by an acute cash crunch and increased taxes. This bottled-up demand for fuel may spill out at a time when crude oil is getting dearer by the day.

India’s per-day fuel demand is pegged at 190,000 barrels in 2018, up from last year’s 93,000 barrels, according to a report from energy research and consultancy firm Wood Mackenzie.

This will increase imports, on which India relies for 80% of its fuel needs. Oil imports made up over a fifth of India’s total import bill in April-November 2017, and grew by 22.6% compared to a year earlier. Rising imports, thus, will widen India’s trade deficit, and if global prices continue to soar as they have in the last few weeks, New Delhi’s fiscal math will go awry and will need to be reworked.

Wider deficits will weaken the government bonds as well as the rupee. If the government borrows more from the market to meet its expenses, that will leave less money for private investors. Higher interest rates would ensue, making bank loans less attractive for investors. Already starved of private investments in production capacities, any further slump will dent India’s economic growth potential.

The second whammy will be rising prices. Dearer fuel directly affects inflation, which is already on an uptrend in India. Higher inflation will cue the central bank to increase interest rates—the following vicious cycle will lead to underwhelming economic growth, at best.

The spike in India’s oil consumption in 2018 could be cyclical as last year was particularly slow for all categories of consumption—the 2.3% fuel demand growth in 2017 was the slowest in three years. This is because the November 2016 note ban sucked out 86% of all money (by value) in circulation. Indians had barely recovered from that shock when the goods and services tax was rolled out, adding to the fuel consumers’ burden.

“India is set to contribute to 14% of the global demand growth in 2018. Diesel and LPG will be the two main drivers,” Aman Verma, Asia-Pacific research analyst at Wood Mackenzie, said in the report.

Pent-up demand

The pent-up demand in the economy is most visible in areas like vehicle sales, which indicates higher fuel consumption in 2018. In the April-December 2017 period, passenger-vehicle sales grew by 8.13%, commercial vehicles by 15.19%, and two-wheelers by 11.76%, compared to the corresponding periods last year, data from the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers show.

Fuel demand was also choked by high retail prices in 2017. Government policy remains a key factor even in India’s deregulated fuel market. While the central levy on fuel has been reduced, it is still nearly double that of three years ago. With the 2019 general elections approaching, the Modi government is unlikely to let consumer anger fester. It may bring down the levy further as recent spikes in crude oil have led to record retail prices for diesel.

India’s three biggest fuel retailers—Indian Oil Corp, Bharat Petroleum Corp, and Hindustan Petroleum Corp—are state-owned and all three are fettered by the government’s political compulsions. At a time when crude oil prices have jumped 45% in recent months, India’s retail fuel price went up by between 9% and 11%.

Cylinders for all

The rise in price and demand for diesel is only one of the risks. Cooking gas could pose the other big challenge. Wood Mackenzie expects continued momentum in liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) sales in India at 40,000 barrels a day in 2018, after a sharp jump of 60,000 barrels a day in the previous year. The big thrust has come from the government scheme that aims to promote cleaner cooking fuel in rural India. Going into an election year, it’s only expected to rope in more homes.

“The phenomenal growth in LPG usage has reduced India’s self-sufficiency of LPG to 50% from about 70% in 2013. Higher imports could also mean an opportunity for US LPG to gain market share in India, traditionally dominated by Middle Eastern suppliers,” Verma said.

Indeed, the World Bank has pegged India as potentially the fastest-growing economy for the next three years. Its fiscal strength and demographic advantage make for a good promise, but surging oil prices and a simultaneous spike in fuel consumption is a potent mix that will make the economy totter as it tries to make a dash.

The US has approved controversial tariffs on imported washing machines and solar panels.

The move is in line with President Donald Trump’s “America First” trade policy, which aims to protect local manufacturers from foreign competition.

A spokesman said the administration would “always defend American workers, farmers, ranchers and businessmen”.

But China and South Korea, whose manufacturers will be most heavily affected, criticised the move.

US officials said more trade enforcement actions would follow.

Mr Trump has talked about taking the action ever since coming to office. In his inauguration speech a year ago he promised to protect US borders from other countries “making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs”.

The actions are being seen as the president’s most significant trade moves since his decision to pull the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal (TPP) and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).

Why have the tariffs been imposed?

The tougher policy was approved by President Trump after the US International Trade Commission found local manufacturers were being hurt by cheaper imports.

The tariffs set on solar panels were lower than domestic US producers had hoped for, but the duties on washing machines and parts were steeper than expected – adding as much as 50% in some cases, according to US documents.

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How will the tariffs work?

The first 1.2 million imported large residential washing machines in the first year will have a 20% tariff imposed on them, while there will be a 50% tariff on machines above that number.

By the third year, these will drop to 16% and 40% respectively.

Meanwhile, the tariff increase on imported solar cells and modules in the first year will be 30%, falling to 15% by the fourth year, although 2.5 gigawatts (GW) of imported cells will be allowed in tariff-free annually.

What has the reaction been?

US appliance maker Whirlpool, which for years has sought protection against cheaper imports from South Korea and Mexico, welcomed the move.

“This announcement caps nearly a decade of litigation and will result in new manufacturing jobs in Ohio, Kentucky, South Carolina and Tennessee,” chairman Jeff Fettig said in a statement.

Shares in Whirlpool rose 2.5% on the news, and it immediately announced it would employ 200 more people. Shares in US solar panel manufacturers also went up.

Environmentalists argue that making solar panels more expensive risks holding back the development of renewable energy in the country.

China and South Korea have reacted angrily to the news.

South Korea said it would complain to the World Trade Organization (WTO), calling the tariffs “excessive” and “regrettable”. Its manufacturers, including Samsung and LG, compete in the washing machine market with US firms such as Whirlpool.

Samsung called the tariffs “a tax on every consumer who wants to buy a washing machine”.

Meanwhile China, the world’s biggest solar panel manufacturer, said the move would further damage the global trade environment.

China is the US’s biggest trading partner and government spokesman Wang Hejun said that Beijing expressed “strong dissatisfaction” with the plans.

He warned that “together with other WTO members, China will resolutely defend its legitimate interests” adding that the plans “not only aroused the concern of many trading partners but was also strongly opposed by many local governments and downstream enterprises in the US”.

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Private investigators in Canada believe that a prominent billionaire couple found dead in their Toronto mansion last month were murdered by multiple assailants, pouring cold water on the theory that their deaths were a result of a murder-suicide.

Canada’s CBC News reported the private investigators’ findings on the couple’s mysterious killing Saturday, citing an unnamed source familiar with a parallel investigation into their deaths.

Police had earlier deemed the deaths of Barry Sherman, 75, and his wife Honey, 70, “suspicious” after a realtor discovered the bodies dangling from a railing near their basement swimming pool on December 15. A coroner’s report determined the couple had died from a form a strangulation called “ligature neck compression.”

Read more: A Billionaire Couple Was Found Dead Over the Weekend. Here’s What We Know About Their Wealth

At the time, police said that there were no signs of forced entry and that they were not looking for suspects; scant details of their murder investigation have been revealed since.

Members of the Sherman family hired a team of private detectives amid reports that police were probing their relatives’ deaths as a possible murder-suicide—a theory shunned by the couple’s family and friends, CBC says.

Besides finding evidence to suggest multiple murderers killed the couple, the investigators reportedly believe that Honey was engaged in a violent struggle before her death, reports CBC. Investigators also claim the couple had been bound together for a time, and that they were killed on Dec. 13, two days before their bodies were first discovered.

Read more: The Probe Into the Deaths of a Canadian Billionaire and His Wife Has Just Become a Murder Investigation

Barry Sherman, one of Canada’s richest individuals, is credited with transforming a small generic drug supplier called Apotex into a multinational with over 11,000 employees. Apotex “revolutionized the pharmaceutical industry in Canada” according to Sherman’s biographer, but its rise enmeshed Sherman in hundreds of legal disputes, the Washington Post reports.

The death of the couple, who were prominent philanthropists, prompted condolences from an array of high profile Canadians, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Tom Brady connected with Danny Amendola on a toe-tapping touchdown late in the fourth quarter, leading New England to yet another electrifying comeback in the postseason to set up a Super Bowl meeting with the Philadelphia Eagles. Here’s what we learned as Brady embarks on his eighth Super Bowl appearance courtesy of Sunday’s 24-20 AFC Championship Game victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars:

1. One by one, the odds kept stacking against Brady in a performance reminiscent of his last two thrilling Super Bowl triumphs. Down 10 points, nursing stitches in his throwing hand, directing a one-dimensional attack minus the greatest tight end in history as well as trusty chain-mover Julian Edelman, Brady shredded the league’s dominant pass defense for 138 yards and a pair of touchdowns in a sensational fourth quarter. Overflowing the NFL Films vault with the latest in a seemingly unending string of instant classics, Brady stands alone atop quarterback mountain, increasing his unsurmountable lead over the pantheon of gridiron legends. Brady’s NFL-record eighth fourth-quarterback comeback in the postseason leaves him with 23 more touchdowns, 2,382 more yards, 11 more victories and three more Super Bowl appearances than any quarterback in playoff history.

2. Much like Super Bowl LI, the Patriots were clearly outclassed by a younger, physical, more athletic squad through three quarters. Following a familiar pattern, however, they were forced to compensate with Brady’s brilliance, a stifling fourth-quarter defense, questionable coaching decisions on the opposing sideline and a series of clutch plays mixed with favorable calls. The Jaguars paid dearly for a delay-of-game penalty late in the second quarter, accrued 68 yards in pass interference penalties attempting to cover Brandin Cooks and got caught playing with Brady’s fourth-quarter fire when their own play-calling regressed to an overly conservative approach. After orchestrating a practically perfect game plan through three quarters, offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett and quarterback Blake Bortles managed just three fourth-quarter punts and a turnover on downs with the Super Bowl on the horizon.

3. The final outcome will end up overshadowing Hackett’s brilliant management of Bortles over the previous seven quarters versus the AFC’s super powers in Pittsburgh and New England. For the second straight week, Hackett eliminated the opposing pass rush, provided Bortles with easy, low-risk throws and allowed his embattled passer to find a comfortable rhythm. Making sound decisions and converting an impressive array of third downs in a ball-control attack, Bortles tied a career-high with 12 consecutive completions in the heart of the afternoon. By halftime, he had completed 13 of 15 throws for 155 yards, one score and a gaudy 131.9 passer rating. Until that fateful final frame, it was fair to make the claim that Bortles had finally lived up to his No. 3 overall draft-pick pedigree, producing the best game of his career on the biggest stage the franchise has seen to date.

4. For all of the pre-game scrutiny over the daunting prospect of containing the unguardable Rob Gronkowski, the All-Pro tight end hauled in just one pass for 21 yards before safety Barry Church’s helmet-to-helmet blow sent him to the locker room late in the second quarter. Although Church’s penalty helped the Patriots find the end zone in the halftime two-minute drill, Gronkowski was lost for the remainder of the game with a head injury. As valuable as any non-quarterback in football, his status will be one to monitor leading up to Super Bowl LII.

5. With Gronkowski nursing a head injury, New England desperately needed Dion Lewis to maintain the white-hot hand he had been boasting for the past month. Instead, Jacksonville’s speedy defense bottled up the ultra-elusive tailback at the line of scrimmage and after the catch, showing superlative tackle form on first contact. Lewis’ lack of playmaking ability left Brady leading a one-dimensional offense for the game’s entirety. Worse, a blindspot in Lewis’ peripheral vision allowed Myles Jack to strip the ball on a trick play that would put the Patriots in field-goal territory late in the third quarter. The Pats will need more production out of the Lewis-James White-Rex Burkhead backfield trio against the stifling defense of the NFC champions.

6. With the exception of a bad drop by Cooks in the third quarter, New England’s underappreciated wideouts surprisingly came out on top in their battle versus Jacksonville’s daunting pass defense. Stretching the field versus A.J. Bouye, Jalen Ramsey and even overmatched linebacker Telvin Smith, Cooks drew 68 yards in pass-interference penalties to go with 100 receiving yards on six receptions. Colts castoff Phillip Dorsett came through with a highlight of his own, pulling down a 31-yard flea flicker over Myles Jack. After converting six first downs in a season-best performance versus the Titans last week, Amendola took his game to an even higher level in Sunday’s fourth quarter. Following a 9-yard touchdown, Amendola broke free for a 20-yard punt return, hauled in a diving red-zone catch and capped off the comeback with a toe-tapping score in the back of the end zone. All Amendola does is take pay cuts and make big plays in the postseason.

7. While Bill Belichick bathes in the deserving glory of his 11th Super Bowl appearance, the Jaguars’ triad of coach Doug Marrone, general manager Dave Caldwell and executive vice president Tom Coughlin merit a tip of the cap for building a bully that bulldozed its way out of the AFC’s basement and onto the doorstep of the Super Bowl. After drafting difference-making All-Pro Jalen Ramsey in 2016, the organization’s braintrust imported a coterie of tone-setters in Calais Campbell, Leonard Fournette, Cam Robinson, A.J. Bouye and Barry Church to instigate this year’s dramatic transformation. Provided Bortles continues to show improvement under Hackett’s guiding hand, Jacksonville is here to stay as an AFC contender.

Jan. 21 (UPI) — The FBI did not retain text messages between two agency officials involved in the investigations of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump for a five-month period, according to a Senate committee letter.

The missing texts were revealed after the FBI delivered more than 400 pages of texts between agent Peter Strzok, who led the investigation of the Clinton email server, and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. The committee requested the bulk of texts after reports in December that the two made disparaging comments about Trump throughout the 2016 presidential election season.

The Department of Justice was able to collect 384 pages worth of texts between Strzok and Page, but said the FBI was not able to collect texts Strzok and Page sent to each other between Dec. 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017.

“The FBI has informed [the Department of Justice] that many FBI-provided Samsung 5 mobile devices did not capture or store text messages due to reconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning and software upgrades that conflicted with the FBI’s collection capabilities,” the Department of Justice statement said, according to Johnson’s letter. “The Result was that data that should have been automatically collected and retained for long-term storage and retrieval was not collected.”

Johnson said the FBI’s inability to collect the texts was “concerning.”

Johnson published several text conversations between Strzok and Page, including one that indicates Clinton, while serving as Secretary of State, emailed President Barack Obama through her private email server while traveling overseas. That information was originally included in former FBI Director James Comey‘s statement in July, 2016, announcing that no criminal charges would be recommended.

But a text from Strzok to Page said that “President” was change to “another senior government official.”

In his letter, Johnson said other conversations between Strzok and Page indicate that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch was aware that the FBI would not recommend criminal charges before she announced in July that she would accept the agency’s recommendation.

Lynch made that announcement after TV news cameras filmed her having a private conversation with former President Bill Clinton at a Phoenix airport.

“Yeah, it’s a real profile in courag(e), since she knows no charges will be brought,” Page texted to Strzok.

In the letter, Johnson asked the FBI to further explain why the text messages are missing and produce other relevant records pertaining to the Clinton investigation.

“Under federal law, the head of each federal agency is required to preserve all records documenting the decision-making process and essential transactions of the agency,” Johnson wrote.

• Dori Myers, 29, is accused of performing oral sex on a 14-year-old boy
• Myers is a teacher at The New School for Leadership and the Arts in Kingsbridge
• She is charged with criminal sexual act and endangering the welfare of a child

By

Abigail Miller For Dailymail.com

Published:
19:09 EST, 20 January 2018

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Updated:
22:22 EST, 20 January 2018

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