Race to lead Labour Party narrows to 3

PM replaces Sajid Javid, other cabinet members

LONDON, Feb 15, (AP): The race to succeed Jeremy Corbyn as the next leader of Britain’s main opposition Labour Party has narrowed to three after Emily Thornberry was narrowly eliminated from the leadership contest.

Thornberry, who speaks on foreign affairs matters for the party, failed to secure the nominations she needed to progress to the final ballot of party members. By the midnight Friday deadline, Thornberry had 31 nominations from local constituency parties, two shy of the number required.

The three remaining candidates, Keir Starmer, Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy, had already obtained the nominations they needed.

They now will go on to the online and postal ballot of party members and registered supporters. That contest opens on Feb. 24 with the winner being announced at a special conference on April 4.

Labour suffered its worst defeat since the 1930s in December’s general election, which saw Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party win a strong majority in parliament.

Many reasons have been cited for Labour’s big defeat including the leadership of Corbyn, a veteran left-winger who was seen to have put off mainstream voters. The party’s unclear position on Britain’s departure from the European Union and cases of antiSemitism among some members have also been cited as factors in Labour’s defeat.

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, carrying out a minor cabinet reshuffle two months after his Conservative Party won the general elections, replaced a number of secretaries and their aides.

The new appointments involved, inter alia, the Exchequer and the departments of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy; Digital, Culture, Media and Sport; and International Development, according to a 10 Downing Street statement.

Rishi Sunak replaced Sajid Javid as Chancellor of the Exchequer; the latter quitted his post after rejecting Johnson’s order to fire his team.

George Eustice, was appointed as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Alok Sharma was named as Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy; he will also be Minister for COP26.

Anne-Marie Trevelyan was appointed as Secretary of State for International Development.

Oliver Dowden CBE MP was approved as Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, while Suella Braverman was named as Attorney General.

Brandon Lewis CBE MP was named as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, while Stephen Barclay will serve as Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

The Prime Minister was expected to carry out the cabinet reshuffle soon after the start of the Brexit process on January 31 in preparation for the negotiations with the European Union on the a free trade agreement, due to start in early March.

Furthermore, allowing China’s state-run rail construction company to build a high-speed rail line linking London with central and northern England would be an “extremely questionable” decision, a prominent British lawmaker said Saturday.

Tom Tugendhat, a Conservative lawmaker who chairs the UK

immediately known. Police said the 23-year-old woman was armed with a handgun, but didn’t say whether she fired the weapon. (AP)

5-year-old who rescued:

A 5-year-old boy who saved his family from a house fire received

special recognition Friday from officials in northwest Georgia.

Noah Woods woke up Sunday to flames in the room he and his 2-year-old sister, Lilly, shared. Officials said he pulled himself and his sister to safety through a bedroom window. He then ran next door, according to an online parliament’s influential Foreign Affairs Committee, told BBC radio that he also had doubts about the ability of China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC) to build the rail line in five years, given the vast differences between the two countries on issues such as planning applications, property rights and protected landscapes.

The company has transformed China’s transport system, building most of China’s 15,500-mile high-speed network over the past couple of decades.

His comments came after Britain’s Department for Transport confirmed that “preliminary discussions” have taken place between CRCC and the massive infrastructure project to improve rail lines to Britain’s central and northern regions known as HS2. According to the Financial Times newspaper, CRCC wrote to HS2 Chief Executive Mark Thurston last month saying it could build the rail line at a far lower cost and accommodate far faster trains.

First approved a decade ago, the project has been the subject of repeated delays and reviews. Trains were originally scheduled to begin running in 2026.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave his support to the project even though it’s running way over budget. The projected cost, estimated at 33 billion pounds in 2011, has soared to as much as 106 billion pounds ($137 billion) and it’s not set to be fully completed until 2040.

“The reason why Chinese projects in China are very often so quick is because they don’t worry about such minor matters as planning consent or workers’ rights,” Tugendhat said. “It seems extremely unlikely that without really short-cutting any number of labor conditions that it would be possible.”

The news of potential Chinese interest in the HS2 project follows the government’s confirmation last month that it will allow Chinese tech giant Huawei to supply new high-speed network equipment.

That move by Johnson’s Conservative government ignored the US government’s warnings that it would withhold intelligence cooperation with Britain if Huawei was given a role in the rollout of the next generation of communications networks. A number of Conservative lawmakers, including Tugendhat, have voiced concerns about that decision.

According to the Daily Telegraph newspaper, a delegation of senior US officials, including President Donald Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, are set to fly to London on Wednesday to raise their concerns over Huawei directly with Johnson, in hopes of getting the prime minister to reverse his decision.

The opposition to Johnson’s decision to give the Chinese company a role in creating Britain’s 5G network isn’t just confined to the United States.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that lawmakers on Australia’s intelligence and security committee have pulled out of a visit to Britain next month over the fallout from Johnson’s controversial decision. Australia, like the US, has banned Huawei from its communication networks over security concerns.

“Personally, I would like to stand with countries that share the rule of law, human rights and the values I think are so important,” Tugendhat said.

funding campaign, and grabbed his uncle, who helped the rest of the family of eight escape.

On Friday, Noah was presented with a proclamation from Bartow County Commissioner Steve Taylor honoring him with his very own day, WXIA-TV reported.

US ban for Lanka army chief:

The US government on Friday issued a travel ban Sri Lanka’s army chief, saying there is “credible information of his involvement” in human rights violations during the final phase of the island nation’s civil war that ended 11 years ago, Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo said.

The army chief, Shavendra Silva, and his immediate family members are now prohibited from traveling to the US in a ban that was quickly denounced by Sri Lanka’s government, which said “there were no substantiated or proven allegations of human rights violations” committed by Silva.

Silva in 2009 was in charge of the 58th Division which encircled the final stronghold of the Tamil Tiger rebels in the last stages of the civil war that killed at least 100,000 people. Human rights groups have accused

the division of violating international human rights laws, including using artillery to shell a hospital, an allegation he has denied. (AP)

US won’t charge McCabe:

Federal prosecutors have declined to charge former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, closing an investigation into whether the longtime target of President Donald Trump’s ire lied to federal officials about his involvement in a news media disclosure, McCabe’s legal team said Friday.

The decision, coming at the end of a tumultuous week between the Justice Department and the White House, is likely to agitate a president who has loudly complained that federal prosecutors have pursued cases against his allies but not against his perceived political enemies.

The action resolves a criminal investigation that began two years ago with a referral from the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office, which concluded that McCabe had lied about having authorized a subordinate to share information with a newspaper reporter for a 2016 article about an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation. (AP)