Media captionEagles fans carry a broken pole in Philadelphia
Incidents of rioting and looting have taken place in the US city of Philadelphia as fans celebrated a historic Super Bowl win on Sunday.
Social media pictures showed scenes of chaos as tens of thousands of Philadelphia Eagles’ fans rejoiced.
A police officer is among those reported injured. Cars and shopfronts have been damaged and looted.
But despite the unruly crowds after the game, police officials say the celebrations were mostly peaceful.
Only three people were arrested, according to Ajeenah Amir, a spokesman for Mayor Jim Kenney.
“Tens of thousands came out and celebrated this amazing victory, and but for a handful of bad actors the celebration was peaceful and jubilant,” Ms Amir said in a statement to OP’S News, adding that the city is thankful to law enforcement.
The city has announced that a celebration parade will be held on Thursday.
Almost 10,000 tuned into a public police radio, with #phillypolicescanner trending nationally on Twitter.
People were reported brawling, flipping over cars, scaling the City Hall gates, mounting garbage trucks, and attempting to tear down traffic lights and lamp posts.
Some fans jumped into crowds from a height, but not without injury, as one police officer reported, saying: “This is extremely horrible. We need rescue here, we got someone horribly injured from a fall.”
Unconfirmed reports of an explosion in the 9th district have been attributed to a power line, while others suggested that it may have been a firework set off in celebration.
One woman filmed the Ritz Carlton Hotel’s awning collapsing under the weight of dozens of revellers, some of whom were previously seen jumping off it. The incident was also reported by NBC’s local TV station.
The team is expected to mark the historic win with a visit to the White House, but some players have indicated they do not plan on attending.
Safety Malcolm Jenkins told CNN on Monday he did not “anticipate attending that” while wide receiver Torrey Smith said last week he would skip the tradition if his team won.
President Trump has previously criticised NFL players for kneeling in political protest during the US national anthem, which is played before American football games.
He said players who fail to stand during the anthem should be fired or suspended.
No players knelt or sat during the anthem on Sunday.
Image copyrightREUTERSImage captionThe attacker managed to escape from the scene
An Israeli man has been stabbed to death outside a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, in what Israeli police say was a terrorist attack.
The victim, Rabbi Itamar Ben Gal, was attacked at a bus stop near Ariel.
Israeli security forces are searching for the assailant, who they identified as a Palestinian man.
Israeli troops meanwhile have killed a Palestinian who they say shot dead a rabbi as he drove near Havat Gilad outpost in the West Bank last month.
Ahmad Jarrar was shot when security forces raided his hideout in al-Yamoun village near Jenin in the northern West Bank on Tuesday, Israeli media said.
Jarrar is suspected of killing Rabbi Raziel Shevach, a father of six, in a drive-by shooting on 9 January.
Israel retroactively legalised Havat Gilad, an unauthorised settlement, in response to the murder.
CCTV footage of Monday’s attack shows Rabbi Ben Gal, a 29-year-old father of four from the settlement of Har Bracha, waiting on a roadside when another man crosses the road and stabs him in the chest.
The Israeli military said a soldier had pursued the suspect in his vehicle and hit him after witnessing the incident, but that he managed to escape.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to catch the attacker.
“We will bring him to justice, as we always do. I put my trust in the security forces who do the hardest work against these reprehensible attacks,” he said.
No group immediately said it was behind the attack. But the militant Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas called it a “continuation of the resistance” to the controversial US decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The attack is the latest in a wave of stabbings, shootings and car-rammings against Israelis, predominantly by Palestinians or Israeli Arabs, since late 2015.
At least 52 Israelis and five foreign nationals have been killed.
Some 300 Palestinians – most of them assailants, Israel says – have also been killed in that period, according to AFP news agency. Others have been killed in clashes with Israeli troops.
Israel has previously said it intends to keep Ariel and some other large settlements blocs in any final peace agreement with the Palestinians. The Palestinians want all the settlements, built on land they claim for a future state, removed.
More than 600,000 Jews live in about 140 settlements built since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.
There are also some 100 outposts – small settlements built without the government’s authorisation.
Last year, the Israeli parliament passed a law allowing for the retroactive legalisation of 55 of them, including in some circumstances those built on private Palestinian land, whose owners would be compensated.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionLast month, Mennonites were told that the body of kidnapped farmer Abraham Fehr had been found
A Paraguayan guerrilla group has freed two Mennonite men it had been holding hostage for five months.
The two were released after their families paid a ransom and handed over food to local communities, Paraguayan media report.
They were abducted by the Paraguayan People’s Army (EPP), a Marxist rebel group which has carried out a string of kidnappings and killings.
A third kidnapped Mennonite farmer was found dead in January.
The family of 36-year-old Abraham Fehr said they were not able to pay the $500,000 (£357,000) ransom the rebels had demanded after his kidnapping in August 2015.
His body was found in a grave in the north of the country. Forensic tests suggested he had died months after being taken. The cause of his death could not be established.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionAbraham Fehr’s wife was told her husband had been dead for two years
Freed following payment
The families of the two Mennonites freed on Monday, Bernhard Blatz and Franz Hiebert, reportedly paid $750,000 and $500,000 in ransoms.
They were found in a rural area by a farmer driving a tractor, the spokesman for the joint military and police task force Víctor Urdapilleta said.
Mennonite Christians settled in Paraguay in the first half of the 20th Century and have more recently been joined by Mennonites fleeing drug-related violence in Mexico.
Mr Hiebert, 32, is one of the Mexican Mennonites who settled in northern Paraguay.
The Mennonite community has become one of the main targets of the Paraguayan People’s Army, which is thought to be trying to gain control of the area the Mennonites farm because it is a strategic route for marijuana smuggling, one of the rebels’ main sources of income.
The Paraguayan authorities have long tried to defeat the EPP, which claims to fight against Paraguay’s oligarchy and for the rights of country’s poor.
The joint task force has further stepped up its efforts since the killing of eight soldiers in a rebel ambush in August 2016.
Paraguayan officials say the rebels are responsible for the killing of 21 military personnel, 13 police officers and 27 civilians since the group first emerged in 2008.
Image copyrightREUTERSImage captionBishop Barros (centre) was greeted by angry protesters at his ordination
The bishop has denied ever knowing about “the serious abuses” committed by Karadima, who was never prosecuted in Chile because so much time had passed but was convicted and sentenced by the Vatican to a lifetime of “penance and prayer”.
“Holy Father, I decided to write this letter to you because I’m tired of fighting, crying and suffering,” Mr Cruz writes.
“Our story is well known and there’s no point reminding you of it, except to tell you of the horror of having experienced this abuse and how I wanted to kill myself.”
In his letter, he also attaches the full text of a previous letter written a month earlier to the Vatican’s top diplomat in Chile, Archbishop Ivo Scapolo.
In that letter, Mr Cruz accuses Bishop Barros of “doing all the dirty work of Fernando Karadima”, and describes the abuse he suffered and which Bishop Barros allegedly witnessed.
Image copyrightAFPImage captionKaradima was only punished by the Vatican
“When we were in a room with Karadima and Juan Barros, if he [Barros] wasn’t kissing Karadima, he watched as one of us, one of the younger ones, was touched by Karadima and forced to give him kisses,” he writes.
“Karadima would say to me: ‘Put your mouth next to mine and stick out your tongue.’ He’d stick out his and kiss us with his tongue. Juan Barros witnessed all of this on countless occasions, not just in my case but in the case of others as well.”
Addressing himself to Pope Francis, Mr Cruz says: “Holy Father, Juan Barros says he saw nothing and yet, there are dozens of us who can testify to the fact that not only was he present when Karadima abused us, but that he, too, kissed Karadima and they touched each other.”
He concludes the letter with this appeal: “Please Holy Father, don’t be like the others. There are so many of us who despite everything think that you can do something. I treasure my faith, it’s what sustains me, but it is slipping away from me.”
Hasn’t the Pope already apologised?
Among the Pope’s remarks that caused such offence were: “The day they bring me proof against Bishop Barros, then I will speak. There is not a single piece of proof against him. Everything is slander. Is this clear?”
He also said: “No one has come forward, they haven’t provided any evidence for a judgment. This is all a bit vague, it’s something that can’t be accepted.”
Marie Collins, a member of the commission at the time, has sent the BBC a photo of her handing the letter to the cardinal.
Image copyrightMARIE COLLINSImage captionMarie Collins is shown here handing the letter to Cardinal O’Malley
“When we gave him the letter for the Pope, he assured us he would give it to the Pope and speak of the concerns,” she told AP earlier. “And at a later date, he assured us that that had been done.”
Mr Cruz told the OP that Cardinal O’Malley had called him later in 2015 to say he had given the letter to the Pope.
Cardinal O’Malley, whose spokesman referred requests for comment to the Vatican, has earned respect for his work in tackling sex abuse by clergy in Boston.
In an unusual step, Cardinal O’Malley openly criticised the Pope last month for his initial remarks in Chile, saying he had left victims feeling abandoned.
Viktor Ahn (middle) won three gold medals at Sochi 2014
XXIII Olympic Winter Games
Venue: Pyeongchang, South Korea Dates: 9-25 February
Coverage: Watch live on BBC TV, Red Button, Connected TVs, BBC Sport website and mobile app.
Thirty-two Russian athletes have appealed against their exclusion from this month’s Winter Olympics.
They include those who had their life bans liftedby the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) last week.
A hearing is set to take place on Wednesday, two days before the Games.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has invited 169 Russians to compete as independent athletes in Pyeongchang after their country was banned over the Sochi doping scandal.
Forty-three Russians were banned for life from the Olympics following the conclusion of an IOC investigation into evidence of state-sponsored Russian doping at their home Games in 2014.
On Thursday, Cas overturned the suspensions of 28 of those, and partially upheld 11 other appeals.
The IOC then turned down a request for 13 of the 28 – and two coaches – to compete.
A special IOC panel “agreed the decision of the Cas had not lifted the suspicion of doping”.
IOC president Thomas Bach said: “The absence of sanctions by Cas does not mean that you are entitled to receive an invitation from the IOC because receiving this invitation is a privilege of clean Russian athletes.”
However, 32 athletes are taking issue with that stance.
Among them are multiple Olympic champion speed skater Viktor Ahn and biathlon gold medallist Anton Shipulin. Neither athlete has previously served a doping ban.
IOC criticised over Russia
IOC member Dick Pound – the former head of the World Anti-Doping Agency – has criticised the IOC over its handling of Russian doping.
At a meeting in Pyeongchang on Tuesday, Pound said: “The IOC has not only failed to protect clean athletes but has made it possible for cheating athletes to prevail against the clean athletes. We talk more than we walk.
“The athletes and the public at large in my view no longer have confidence that their interests are being protected. Our commitment to both is in serious doubt.
“More attention has been paid to getting Russian athletes into the Pyeongchang Games than dealing with the Russian conduct.”
However, Pound’s view was not shared by the other IOC delegates at the meeting.
Only Pound and British IOC member Adam Pengilly – who last week called the decision to overturn Russian bans “craven and spineless” – abstained from an otherwise unanimous vote of confidence in how the the IOC has handled the Russian doping issue.
One minister arrived by car from Germany to attend a rally in Rotterdam in defiance of the ban, but police escorted her out of the country. Riot police were then deployed in the city to break up angry demonstrations by Dutch-Turkish citizens.
At the time, Dutch voters were set to go to the polls for a general election and Prime Minister Mark Rutte cited security concerns ahead of the vote to justify the decision.
Similar rows took place elsewhere in Europe, with Turkish officials also blocked from holding rallies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan responded furiously, saying: “Nazism is still widespread in the West.”
The Turkish government banned the Dutch ambassador, who was on holiday at the time, from returning.
Media captionA look at how tensions between Turkey and the Netherlands unfolded
The unprecedented diplomatic crisis caused the Dutch foreign ministry to issue a travel warning last year, urging its citizens in Turkey to take care and noting the new “diplomatic tensions”.
The formal withdrawal of the Dutch ambassador is a sign of how deep the rifts remain between Turkey and some European countries that have lambasted the Turkish government for arresting tens of thousands after the failed July 2016 coup, clamping down on free speech and lashing out at any western criticism, says the BBC’s Mark Lowen in Istanbul.
He adds that 13 years ago, Turkey started negotiations to join the EU, but today it has no ambassadorial ties with one of the bloc’s founding members.
The Netherlands is the biggest foreign investor in Turkey.
Wider discussion in Australia about possible Chinese influence has been dismissed by Beijing as “hysteria”.
Publisher Hardie Grant said it would release the book, now titled Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia, after it had been rewritten to “minimise the legal risk”.
Prof Hamilton told the OP’S NEWS that he had earlier submitted the book to Australian lawmakers in a bid to have it published under parliamentary privilege. Such a move would give it legal protection.
However, Hardie Grant confirmed the book would be published in March.
Media captionIs China trying to influence Australian universities?
Prof Hamilton said the book contained allegations about covert efforts to influence Australian politics and society.
He did not elaborate on those allegations, or what had been rewritten recently.
“I’m very grateful that Hardie Grant has the courage to stand up and say, ‘we’re not going to be bullied out of publishing this book’, unlike other publishers,” he said on Tuesday.
However, he stressed that the laws were not specifically aimed at China.
China has repeatedly rejected assertions that it has attempted to influence Australian society, most prominently in politics and education.
“We urge the Australian side to look at China and China-Australia relations in an objective, fair and rational manner,” a spokesperson for China’s embassy in Australia said in December.
Image copyrightCOURTESY: MILAAP.ORGImage captionDhanyashri has fractures on her spine and her legs
A crowdfunding site in India has raised more than 1.6 million rupees ($24,976; £17,680) for a four-year-old girl who was critically injured after a drunk man fell on her from a three-storey building.
The girl, Dhanyashri Sridhar, is still recovering in hospital.
The fund, only a week old, has received money from more than a thousand people.
It was launched by a group of young men who live in the same neighbourhood as the Sridhars in Chennai city.
“It feels good to know she is recovering,” said Sathish Kumar Mohan, one of the men who helped launch the crowdfunding campaign.
Mr Mohan, a 30-year-old software engineer, told the BBC that he and his friends found out about the accident through a group on WhatsApp.
The group has about 20 participants, all of whom live in the neighbourhood of Old Washermanpet. One of the members messaged on 30 January, saying a little girl had been badly injured and her family needed help.
Mr Mohan said this was not unusual because they had collected money or mobilised help in the past by spreading messages through WhatsApp groups.
Messages on WhatsApp, especially on groups, travel quickly in India where the messaging platform has more than 200 million monthly active users.
But this time, Mr Mohan said, they needed a lot more money. Dhanyashri had fractures in her spine and her legs, and she also needed surgery.
That’s when some of Mr Mohan’s friends suggested creating an online campaign that would crowdsource funds. “They told me, it will help you reach out to many more people,” he said.
Mr Mohan first contacted the girl’s father, A Sridhar, over the phone. Then he met him personally to explain that they were raising money to help Dhanyashri.
Mr Sridhar told the OP’S NEWS that he hopes his daughter will recover soon. He added that he wanted to thank everyone for the money they have contributed.
Image copyrightMILAAP.ORGImage captionMore than a thousand people have donated money to the campaign
It’s done “exceptionally well” considering it only launched on January 31, Arti Rajan, the communication officer for the crowdfunding platform, told OP’S NEWS
She said the donations varied from $1.56 to $780. Now, the fund is just $6,000 short of its target: $31, 200. It has 24 days left to reach the goal.
He is still in touch with Dhanyashri’s father, Mr Sridhar.
“I spoke to him last night and he told me she woke up and recognised her sister,” Mr Mohan said. “He said she is eating again and they gave her some dosa with milk.”
A crew of 22 Indian nationals have been freed by pirates in the Gulf of Guinea off Benin in West Africa.
The crew was on board an oil tanker called the Marine Express, which went missing last Thursday and has also been released with its entire cargo of oil.
All crew members are safe, according to Anglo-Eastern Shipping, the Hong Kong firm that appointed them.
The incident occurred less than a month after another vessel was taken by pirates in the same area.
In January, a ship was hijacked in the region but was released six days later when a ransom was paid.
It is not clear if a ransom was paid for the Marine Express and its crew.
The OP’S NEWS OP says that Africa’s most dangerous waters used to be off Somalia but, after the deployment of international warships, the situation there has improved.
There are now more attacks in West Africa – more than one a week in 2017.
Image copyrightSPACEXImage captionThe Falcon Heavy will go up from the Kennedy Space Center
Elon Musk will attempt to fly the world’s most powerful rocket later with his own sports car on the top.
The US entrepreneur’s Falcon Heavy launcher is designed to have twice the lifting capacity of any other vehicle.
But because of the historic high failure rate of maiden flights, only a dummy payload is being risked.
Mr Musk has decided this should be his old cherry-red Tesla roadster with a space-suited mannequin strapped in the driver’s seat.
David Bowie’s classic hit Space Oddity will be looping the radio as the car is hurled into an elliptical orbit that stretches out to Mars’ orbit around the Sun.
“[The roadster will] get about 400 million km away from Earth, and it’ll be doing 11km/s,” he told reporters in a briefing on Monday. “We estimate it will be in that orbit for several hundred million years, maybe in excess of a billion years.”
Three cameras attached to the car would provide “epic views”, Mr Musk added.
Image copyrightELON MUSK/INSTAGRAMImage captionThe car will be sent towards Mars’ orbit – but there is little chance it will hit the planet
Thousands of spectators are expected to descend on Florida’s Space Coast to witness the ascent, which could occur as early as 13:30 EST (18:30 GMT).
Mr Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, has given itself three hours to get the vehicle up on Tuesday. If technical glitches lead to a postponement, a second attempt will be made on Wednesday.
The Falcon Heavy is essentially three of SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 vehicles strapped together. But the triple-booster configuration has demanded a number of specific alterations, including a strengthening of the central core booster.
The 27 Merlin engines at the base of the rocket should be capable of generating almost 23,000 kilonewtons of thrust – slightly more than double that of the world’s current most powerful rocket, the Delta IV Heavy, which is operated by US competitor United Launch Alliance.
The 70m-tall Falcon Heavy is designed to put up to a maximum of 64 tonnes in low-Earth orbit. That is like putting five London double-decker buses in space.
In reality, however, the Heavy would rarely be asked to raise so much because SpaceX intends to land the rocket’s boosters back on Earth after launch and the fuel required to do this necessarily negates some performance. But the rocket’s immense thrust does open up some fascinating new possibilities. These include:
much bigger satellites for use by US intelligence and the military. The scale of these satellites is limited by current rocket performance.
large batches of satellites, such as those for Mr Musk’s proposed constellation of thousands of spacecraft to deliver broadband across the globe.
bigger, more capable robots to go to the surface of Mars, or to visit the outer planets such as Jupiter and Saturn, and their moons.
putting up huge telescopes. Hubble’s successor, the James Webb telescope, is having to be folded origami-like for its launch in 2019
At the moment, the Falcon Heavy only has a handful of bookings on its manifest.
Two of these are for large telecommunications satellites that must be thrown up into a geostationary orbit some 36,000km above the Earth.
“These satellites are over six tonnes, knowing that the capacity of the rocket is eight tonnes to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) – if it is fully reused,” Rachel Villain, from the leading space consultancy Euroconsult, told OP’S News.
“So, obviously, the objective must be to fully re-use the rocket, otherwise the capacity to GTO is 20 tonnes which is a lot to fill.”
She added: “The main targets are possibly the US government and those proprietary constellations. And when I say US government, I mean both beyond Earth orbit (Nasa) and the US Department of Defence, because SpaceX is now a recognised supplier to the DoD for classified and non-classified missions.”
Assuming it works, the Falcon Heavy raises some thorny issues for US space policy.
While Nasa could certainly find many uses for the extra capability, it has its own “monster rocket” in development.
The conundrum for the agency and legislators in Washington DC is that this Space Launch System, as it is known, is still some years away from entering service (in a 70-tonnes to LEO configuration); but more than that – it will probably cost about $1bn per flight. Mr Musk says his Falcon Heavy will cost just $90m per flight.
Many commentators are already asking how Congress can justify the considerable extra expense of the SLS when a much cheaper alternative is about to become available.
And Mr Musk is not the only entrepreneur developing a commercial heavy-lift solution that promises to dramatically undercut the SLS on cost.
Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon.com, is working on a rocket he calls New Glenn, which should be able to put 45 tonnes in low-Earth orbit. He has even teased something more powerful still, called New Armstrong.
Image copyrightSPACEXImage captionA test firing of the engines occurred at the end of last month
Mr Musk has emphasised the difficulties in getting the Falcon Heavy ready for its maiden outing.
His formal announcement of the project was in 2011, with a first flight planned for perhaps 2013. Five years later, the entrepreneur concedes the chances are significant.
“If it goes wrong, hopefully it goes wrong far into the mission, so at least we learn as much as possible along the way,” he said.
“I’ll consider it a win if it just clears the pad and doesn’t blow the pad to smithereens. That’s 4,000,000lbs of TNT equivalent. There’s probably not going to be much left if that thing lets loose.”
Getting all 27 engines to light in unison and control them during the first phase of ascent is not straightforward.
The Soviets tried to ignite 30 engines on the first stage of their ill-fated Moon rocket, the N1, and never got to orbit. Mr Musk has a future rocket under development he calls the BFR. This will feature 31 first-stage engines.
Image copyrightSPACEXImage captionThe Falcon Heavy is essentially three Falcon 9s strapped together
OP's News 