French parliament to probe handling of 2015 attacks The French parliament will create a commission to investigate the government’s handling of last year’s attacks in the country, the parliamentary leader of the opposition Republicans party says Tuesday. The probe into “the resources put in place by the state to fight terrorism since January 7, 2015” — the date of an attack on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo — will begin soon, Christian Jacobs tells reporters. Four days after the jihadist terror attacks of November 13 claimed 130 lives in the French capital, Jacob said his parliamentary group was likely to ask for the probe “so that the French people will know the whole truth about the conditions in which these attacks could have happened.”.

UN: Nearly 19,000 civilians killed in Iraq since 2014 At least 18,802 civilians were killed and another 36,245 were wounded in Iraq between the start of 2014 and October 31 of last year as Iraqi forces battled the Islamic State group, says a new UN report. The report documents a wide range of human rights abuses, including the IS group’s conscription of some 3,500 people into slavery, mainly women and children from the Yazidi religious minority captured in the summer of 2014 and forced into sexual slavery. Five injured, two seriously in Tel Aviv mafia bombing A car explosion in Tel Aviv has seriously injured two people and moderately hurt another. Police say the blast is an underworld gang hit and not a terror attack. Two passersby were lightly hurt in the bombing, which rocked roads near the stock exchange in Ramat Gan, the Ma’ariv news site reports. The injured includes a senior figure in the crime organization headed by Amir Mulner.

Pini Halpern, head of the emergency ward at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital, confirms in a statement that three people with injuries have arrived at the ward, two of them in serious condition, who were being treated in the trauma room. Paramedics treat injured in Tel Aviv gang-hit explosion Yehuda Hildesheim, a volunteer with the Hatzalah emergency response organization describes the scene of the underworld gang hit in Tel Aviv where a car exploded and burst into flames injuring five. He says that when he arrived at the site, he found two people with serious injuries and burns resulting from the force of the explosion in their car. They received initial treatment on site. He adds that a man and a woman who happened to be passing by at the time of the blast were treated for light injuries.

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Effi Levev, deputy director of the Tel Aviv District Magen David Adom ambulance service, and senior ambulance paramedic Danny Ben Aroush, says two men were lying seriously hurt outside of the car when they arrived, one of them unconscious, and nearby was a third man, aged around 30, who suffered injuries from the force of the explosion. Swedish prosecutor opens inquiry into FM Wallstrom A Swedish anti-corruption prosecutor has opened an inquiry to determine whether a crime was committed when Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom obtained a Stockholm rental apartment from a union. “The media has since Friday published reports that representatives for the trade union Kommunal have since late summer 2014 until April 2015 promised and then obtained a rental contract for Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom in one of the union’s buildings in Stockholm,” special prosecutor Alf Johansson at the National Economic Crimes Bureau says in a statement.

The prosecutor says he had “decided to open an inquiry into both the giving and taking of a bribe to determine if a crime has been committed.” Wallstrom insists she acted in good faith and that she had received guarantees that Kommunal was following the rules. She welcomes the inquiry.

“I welcome an investigation. I have nothing to hide and it is good that this will get sorted out,” she tells news agency TT, adding: “I will continue to do my job.” The 61-year-old Social Democrat has repeatedly enraged Israel, starting with Sweden’s recognition of a Palestinian state shortly after she became foreign minister in October 2014. In December, she called on Israel to halt what she called “extrajudicial executions” in response to attacks by knife-wielding Palestinians, following up with a demand this month for “thorough” investigations into the killing of Palestinians by the Israeli army. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seen at the Jerusalem Supreme Court on January 19, 2016, to appeal his sentence in the Talansky Case. (Photo by Amit Shabi/POOL) Olmert had been sentenced in May 2014 to six years in prison on two separate charges of taking bribes in the early 2000s in connection with the construction of Jerusalem’s massive Holyland residential complex. In December the Supreme Court reduced his sentence to 18 months in prison and acquitted him of one of the charges.

Israel Radio reports Olmert struck a deal Monday with the prosecution to avoid another jail term The report says Olmert’s lawyer reached the agreement on behalf of the 70-year-old with the prosecutor general who had accused Olmert of obstructing justice. The prosecutor agrees to Olmert concurrently serving six months for obstructing justice with his 18-month sentence for corruption.

Olmert had been sentenced in May 2014 to six years in prison on two separate charges of taking bribes in the early 2000s in connection with the construction of Jerusalem’s massive Holyland residential complex. But in December the Supreme Court reduced his sentence to 18 months in prison and acquitted him of one of the charges.

11 swine flu deaths in Syria since September Eleven people have been killed by the swine flu virus in Syria since September, the country’s health ministry says. “Since September, 27 people infected with the H1N1 virus have been hospitalised. Eleven of them died,” Ahmad Damiriyeh of the health ministry’s division on chronic and contagious diseases is quoted in the state-run Al-Thawra daily as saying.

In December one woman died of swine flu in Israel and another ten people were hospitalized with the disease. The H1N1 cases were spread across Syria, according to the newspaper. Syria reported its first death from swine flu in August 2009, during a regional outbreak that sparked warnings from governments and the World Health Organization. By August 2010, when the WHO lifted its warning, the virus had killed 18,500 people in 214 countries.

Ya’alon: I have no doubt we will defeat this wave of terror Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon says he is sure Israel will be successful in ending the current wave of terror. “There is wave of terror, but we defeat it, I have no doubt,” Ya’alon says during a visit to the West Bank settlement of Otniel, where a woman was stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist on Sunday. “We need to be determined, we need to be aware, but in the end, we will defeat this as we have done in the past,” he adds. More than two dozen Israelis have been killed in stabbing, shooting and car ramming attacks since October 1. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, right, during a visit to the settlement of Otniel in the West Bank, January 19, 2016.

(Government Press Office) Ya’alon also thanks security forces for their help in capturing the perpetrator of Sunday’s attack. “At this opportunity I want to praise the IDF, the Central Command, the Shin Bet security agency, border police officers and the police for their tireless work in order to bring security to the area,” he says Ya’alon toured the area around the Otniel settlement with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, IDF Central Region Commander Major General Roni Numa and other senior regional commanders. Iran’s Khamenei warns against US ‘deceit’ in nuclear deal Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warns against American “deceit” after Tehran finalized a landmark nuclear deal with world powers led by the United States. In his first comments since the agreement was implemented, Khamenei stresses in a letter to President Hassan Rouhani the need to “guard against deceit and violations of arrogant states particularly the United States.” The supreme leader, who had the final say on Tehran’s nuclear negotiations, welcomes the lifting of sanctions under the deal, but says it is “not enough for boosting the economy and improving people’s lives,” according to the letter published by the IRNA news agency. Khamenei has never endorsed repairing relations with the US and has largely followed a similar tack to Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who dubbed America the “Great Satan.” The nuclear deal saw an end to years of economic sanctions on Iran but Washington on Sunday announced new financial measures against Tehran’s ballistic missile programme. Tehran decries the new measures as “illegitimate”. US LGBTQ group cancels event with Israeli gay leaders A Wider Bridge, an Israeli LGBT activist group, alleges that the National LGBTQ Task Force canceled a reception with leaders of the Israeli gay organization, Jerusalem’s Open House, scheduled to be held at the Creating Change conference in Chicago, due to pressure from anti-Israel activists.

The conference will be held January 20-22. The organization announced over the weekend it would move the reception scheduled for January 22 to a new location outside the conference venue. Local Jewish communities in the Bay Area show their support for the gay community at the San Francisco gay parade. (file photo; photo credit: Daniel Dreifuss/Flash 90) A Wider Bridge calls for the event to be included on the conference’s program, and for an apology from the National LGBTQ Task Force.

“We are saddened by what appears to be capitulation to the intimidation of a small number of anti-Israel extremists who want to shut down the voices of those who don’t adhere to their rigid and exclusive party line. As LGBTQ people, we are all too familiar with being oppressed through shaming, the closet, and imposed silence, and we see great danger in allowing this kind of censorship and blatant double standard to become the norm in our community,” says Arthur Slepian, executive director of A Wider Bridge, in the statement.

Netanyahu: We will continue to build and protect our land Speaking on the occasion of the 67th anniversary of the opening of the first Knesset, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will remain steadfast against threats on its democracy and its citizens. “Israel stands on the other side of despotic Middle Eastern regimes. We have rule of law. We have democracy. We have democratic institutions,” he says. Referencing Sunday’s fatal stabbing in the West Bank settlement of Otniel, Netnayahu says, “no one will be successful in removing us from our land. “We will be here forever.

We will continue to build it and protect it,” he adds. Knesset speaker: Israeli democracy is in danger Speaking on the occasion of the 67th anniversary of the opening of the first Knesset, speaker Yuli Edelstein warns that bad behavior by lawmakers is damaging the image of the parliament and limiting its ability to govern.

“Knesset members come and go, but it is Israeli democracy, ladies and gentlemen, that is in real danger,” Edelstein says. “The Knesset is your home and all of us are it’s emissaries.” he tells the lawmakers. “Please don’t spill the baby with the bathwater, don’t lose the Knesset as an essential institution of the rule of law.” The first meeting of the Knesset took place on February 14, 1949.

The anniversary is held each year on the Hebrew date of the 10th of Shvat which is also the traditional “birthday for trees.”. An Iranian woman walks past a Bank Pasargad in the capital Tehran on January 19, 2016. Iran will receive $32 billion of unfrozen assets after sanctions were lifted in a deal with world powers over its nuclear programme, Iranian central bank chief Valiollah Seif said.( AFP / ATTA KENARE) He does not say how much money was involved in the transfers, though he said the nuclear deal would give Tehran access to $32 billion in overseas assets. Seif says that $28 billion (25.8 billion euros) would go to the central bank and $4 billion “will be transferred to the state treasury as the share of the government”. He also pledges to address the parallel exchange rate for Iranian rials and foreign currencies on the black market, which trade 20 percent higher than their official values. The black market rate is 36,000 Iranian rials to the dollar while the official rate is 30,000 rials for a dollar.

Central region army drill set for Wednesday The army says the Home Front Command will hold a training exercise in a number of cities in central Israel on Wednesday. Heavy troop movement can be expected in the cities and towns of Holon, Modiin, Givat Shmuel, Nes Tziona and Beit Dagan, according to an army statement. The drill will take place in the “early hours” of Wednesday morning. The Army Spokesman’s office stresses that the exercise had been planned in advance and was not connected to recent events. Thousands of Ultra Orthodox Jews attend the funeral ceremony of Rabbi Rafael Shmuelovich at the Mir Yeshiva Hall in Beit Israel neighborhood of Jerusalem, on January 19, 2016.

(Flash90) Shuelovich had served as the dean or “Rosh Yeshiva” of the Mir Yeshiva since 1979 when his father, the previous dean passed away. He was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or ALS in 2012 and given just months to live but showed signs of recovery after experimental stem cell treatment at Hadassah Medical Center. He was the subject of a Channel 2 News documentary on the treatment. Belgian Jewish newspaper complains over Holocaust denier interview in daily A Belgian Jewish newspaper is complaining to the country’s watchdog on journalism about a daily that published a Holocaust denier’s claim that no one died in Nazi gas chambers.

The Antwerp-based Joods Actueel monthly filed the complaint against the De Morgen daily last week, the monthly’s editor-in-chief, Michael Freilich, tells JTA Monday. In its complaint against De Morgen, Joods Actueel cited legislation from 1995 that forbids claiming the Holocaust did not happen – a law which Freilich claims was broken both by De Morgen and by the newspaper’s interviewee, Siegfried Verbeke. In an interview published earlier this month, Verbeke, a far-right symathizer with multiple convictions for inciting racial hate against Jews and denying the genocide, said, “Of course gas chambers existed, hundreds of them. To disinfect the clothes of people who went through them. But gas chambers designed to kill people never existed, no.” The Belgian state’s authority for combatting discrimination, ICGK, said it was looking into legal action against Verbeke over this statement and Antwerp Mayor Bart De Wever expressed support for his prosecution.

But “De Morgen is for all intents and purposes an accomplice in this offense, and should answer for its actions,” Freilich says. Police patrol in front of the main train station and the cathedral in Cologne, Germany, Monday, January 18, 2016.

(AP Photo/Martin Meissner) The attacks have stoked a fierce debate in Germany about how to integrate the almost 1.1 million asylum-seekers who arrived last year. German news agency DPA reported Tuesday that police are investigating 21 people from North African countries in connection with the Cologne attacks for robbery, theft and trafficking stolen goods.

Eight suspects are currently in detention. One of them is accused of sexual assault for allegedly groping a woman. German police searching for Hitler-lookalike who attacked immigrants Dresden police are searching for a man — described as sporting a Hitler mustache and wearing a Nazi-style helmet emblazoned with a swastika — who assaulted an Afghan immigrant on a sledding hill in eastern Germany. Police say the man approached two Afghan men, aged 21 and 26, on Saturday in Geising, south of Dresden. Witnesses say the attacker insulted them, and then hit the younger man on the head, knocking him to the ground. After passers-by intervened, police say the man showed the stiff-armed Nazi salute, then fled the scene.

The man, who is being sought on charges of assault and the display of banned symbols, is described as strongly built, about 25-30 years old, with a shaved head. Police are appealing to the public for any information. Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely and former foreign minister Tzipi Livni during a live broadcast on Channel 2 news. (Screenshot) “We gained absolutely nothing from your failed attempts to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority,” Hotovely tells Livni. “The wave of violence we are seeing now is a consequence of you bolstering Abu Mazen.” “Stop hiding behind what we did and blaming us for your lack of control,” Livni responds. “This government has damaged our relations with the US and is failing to protect the citizens of Israel,” she adds.

When Hotovely tries to interrupt the former foreign minister, Livni snaps, “Let me answer. You will let me answer.”. Brno Jewish community unveils new Torah scroll The Jewish community of Brno in the Czech Republic, inaugurates a new Torah scroll in the city’s only surviving synagogue. The dedication ceremony marks the completion of a more than one-year-long renovation of the synagogue in the country’s second largest city. Several hundred people attend the inauguration, including the head of the Czech Republic’s federation of Jewish communities Petr Papousek, Israeli ambassador to the Czech Republic Gary Koren, the mayor of Brno Petr Vokral and the bishop of the Brno diocese Vojtech Cikrle. The Torah scroll was fashioned by Jewish scribe Rabbi Moshe Fluemenbaum of Jerusalem. The costs of the renovation, which amounted to about $480,000, were covered by the EU as well as the European Economic area and Norway grants.

The cost of the new Torah scroll alone was over $32,000, according to the manager of the project, Petr Špunar of the Brno Jewish community. The Jewish community of Brno has about 300 members. The functionalist-style Agudas Achim synagogue was erected in the 1930s. It was re-dedicated in 1945 and has since been in active use as the only synagogue in the eastern region of the country.

Police were dispatched to Clifton High School but have found “no credibility to these threats” although “precautions are still being taken throughout the district in response to the situation,” according to a statement on Facebook. The message was apparently recorded overnight and “indicated a non-specific threat to the school district involving the placement of a bomb in one of the schools, as well as a secondary threat of a ‘mass shooting,'” police write. The schools evacuated are located in Bergenfield, Englewood, Fair Lawn, Garfield, Hackensack, Leonia, Tenafly and Teaneck, said the spokesman for Bergen County Sheriff Michael Saudino.

US LGBTQ group re-invites Israelis after protest The National LGBTQ Task Force is reinstating a event for Israeli gay activist group Jerusalem’s Open House, after its cancellation elicited criticism from Israeli and Jewish organizations. “Having taken in a range of information and seeing what has happened over the last couple of days, I have decided to reverse our decision to cancel the ‘Beyond the Bridge’ reception hosted by A Wider Bridge with guest speakers from the Jerusalem Open House.

It is our belief that when faced with choices, we should move towards our core value of inclusion and opportunities for constructive dialogue and canceling the reception was a mistake,” Rea Carey, Executive Director of the National LGBTQ Task Force says in a statement. “In reversing the decision today, we want to make it quite clear that the Creating Change Conference will always be a safe space for inclusion and dialogue for people with often widely different views. It was not at all our intention to censor representatives of the Jerusalem Open House or A Wider Bridge at Creating Change and I apologize that our actions left people feeling silenced,” the statement reads. National LGBTQ Task Force has reversed decision to cancel the ‘Beyond the Bridge’ reception at Creating Change — The Task Force (@TheTaskForce) A Wider Bridge, an Israeli LGBT activist group, alleged that the National LGBTQ Task Force had canceled a reception with leaders of Jerusalem’s Open House, scheduled to be held at the Creating Change conference in Chicago, due to pressure from anti-Israel activists. The New Israel Fund had condemned the cancellation calling it “morally and pragmatically wrong.”. Netanyahu, Shapiro meet after public spat over West Bank ‘double standards’ Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with US ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro Tuesday, a day after the envoy leveled sharp criticism against Israel’s West Bank settlement policy, and alleged Israel had two standards of law in the territory, one for Israelis and one another for Palestinians. The ambassador’s comments on Monday drew a furious response from Israel, but according to Hebrew reports on Tuesday, Netanyahu and Shapiro held a friendly half-hour meeting in the Prime Minister’s Office.

The two were signaling that there was no lingering tensions between the US and Israel following Monday’s public spat. Freed US Marine says he feels lucky after Iran prisoner swap release Former US Marine Amir Hekmati says he feels humbled and lucky to be free again, after being one of four Americans released by Iran as part of a prisoner swap. Hekmati tells reporters Tuesday outside the US military’s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany that news of his impending release came as a surprise.

The 32-year-old says he and his fellow prisoners weren’t able to relax until the Swiss government plane they were flown out in had left Iranian airspace, after which “champagne corks were popped.”. Dan Kildee meets with former Iran prisoner Amir Hekmati at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany, January 18, 2016. (Courtesy of the Hekmati Family via AP) US Rep. Dan Kildee, a Democrat from Hekmati’s home state of Michigan, said he spent several hours with the 32-year-old and that he seems in good health. “He has not had much of a chance to exercise and he’s lost some weight but he looks fit and I think he is on the mend,” Kildee told The Associated Press.

“A better diet and a chance to exercise and I think he’ll turn out to be just fine.” Hekmati, Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and pastor Saeed Abedini arrived late Sunday at Landstuhl for treatment. A fourth American released in exchange for the U.S. Pardoning or dropping charges against seven Iranians opted to stay in Iran, and a fifth American was released separately. Hekmati was detained in August 2011 on espionage charges. Hekmati says he went to Iran to visit family and spend time with his ailing grandmother. After his arrest, family members say they were told to keep the matter quiet.

He was convicted of spying and sentenced to death in 2012. After a higher court ordered a retrial, he was sentenced in 2014 to 10 years on a lesser charge. Trump flip-flops, pledges to move US Embassy to Jerusalem Donald Trump says he would move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. “They want it in Jerusalem,” the front-runner among Republican presidential candidates says in an interview posted Tuesday by The Brody File, a Christian Broadcasting Network show.

“Well I am for that 100 percent. We are for that 100 percent.” David Brody, the CBN journalist, had asked Trump whether he agreed with GOP rivals, including Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, who have pledged to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem once elected.

Trump’s agreement seems to be an about-face from remarks in December at the Republican Jewish Coalition, when the real estate magnate refused to commit to recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital. Speaking over boos at that event, Trump said it was foolish to harden positions ahead of talks. “You can’t go in with the attitude ‘we’re gonna shove it down your,’ you’ve got to go in and get it and do and do it it nicely, so that everybody’s happy,” he said there. Congress passed a law in 1995 mandating the move of the embassy to Jerusalem, but allowed the president a waiver.

Each president since then has routinely exercised the waiver, citing the national security interests of the United States. — JTA, Times of Israel staff. Ya’alon: I prefer Islamic State in Syria than Iran Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon says that Iran poses a greater threat than Islamic State and that if the Syrian regime were to fall, Israel would prefer IS controlling the territory than an Iranian proxy. “In Syria, if the choice is between Iran and the Islamic State, I choose the Islamic State. They don’t have the capabilities that Iran has,” Ya’alon tells the INSS conference. The Defense Minister was speaking about the threats facing Israel during the thinktank’s annual conference.

–Judah Ari Gross. ADL praises LGBTQ group’s reversal on invite for Israelis The Anti-Defamation League welcomes the National LGBTQ Task Force’s reversal of its decision to cancel a reception for Israeli gay group Jerusalem’s Open House at their upcoming annual “Creating Change” conference. “We are very pleased that the Task Force has reversed course and taken responsibility for their deeply misguided decision to cancel this reception. We were surprised and disappointed with the initial choice to cancel an event that had been designed to celebrate and embrace ties with Israel’s diverse LGBTQ community.

That initial decision was unworthy of an organization committed to justice and equality,” the ADL says a statement. “The initial decision to cancel an event highlighting the work of an organization that serves the entire Israeli LGBTQ community, Jews and Arabs alike, was an indefensible exception to that practice,” the statement adds. 6-year-old NJ boy killed by car while walking to synagogue A 6-year-old New Jersey boy was struck and killed by a car while walking to his Orthodox synagogue.

Chaim Kraus of Highland Park was heading to Agudath Israel of Edison and Highland Park with his mother, Rochie, when the two were hit by a car that skipped onto the sidewalk curb on Raritan Avenue in their Central Jersey township on Saturday afternoon. Rochie Kraus, 37, was still being treated for critical injuries as of Monday, according to WABC-TV in New York. The driver, Shang Zhen Huang, 21, of Piscataway, was treated for minor injuries before being released to police. Huang has been charged with two counts of aggravated assault and is being held in lieu of a $200,000 bail.

Police are still investigating the incident. “The tragic accident yesterday has the entire community grieving,” Highland Park Mayor Gayle Brill Mittler tells NJ.com. Cabinet minister calls for the creation of an independent Kurdistan In an unprecedented move Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked calls for relations with Kurds to be at the center of a new Israeli national security policy, and says the time has come for the rectification of the historic injustice of the lack of a Kurdish state. “We must openly call for the establishment of a Kurdish state that separates Iran from Turkey, and that will be friendly towards Israel,” Shaked tells the annual INSS security conference in Tel Aviv. “We must build economic and other ties with them. It is time to help them,” she says. “The Kurdish people are a partner for the Israeli people,” she tells the conference, noting the shared interests of Israel and the Kurds in defeating the rise of jihadist Muslim groups in the region.

“The Kurds are an ancient, democratic, peace-loving people that have never attacked any country,”.

HAVING wrapped filming for the next season of Foxtel hit A Place to Call Home, actor Marta Dusseldorp and her husband Ben Winspear have decided it’s time to depart their Paddington terrace. It may only be a short-term move — their elegant Paddington home is advertised as being available for a 12-month plus lease and is not for sale. The rental listing has reignited suggestions that Hollywood might be on the horizon for the couple. Dusseldorp briefly headed to the US some two decades ago, but couldn’t afford to pursue the challenge. Marta Dusseldorp. Picture: AAP/Paul Miller Source:AAP She has since become an award-winning stage and television actor.

Now at the top of her game, Dusseldorf signalled recently she could be off to America. The traditional terrace house is described as both contemporary and true to its 19th century traditions. It features stunning high ceilings, ornate cornices, beautiful woodwork, and kauri floors, costing the couple $2.125 million in 2013. They’re now asking $1700 a week for the four-bedroom home which comes with two renovated bathrooms. Downstairs living, dining and kitchen areas open to a large courtyard garden through period French doors.

Phillips Pantzer Donnelley agents William Hesketh and Katrina Borg are leasing the home. Before any rumoured Hollywood move, the couple will head to Brisbane, where they both will appear in Joanna Murray-Smith’s stage adaptation of Scenes from a Marriage for the Queensland Theatre Company. The adaptation of theIngmar Bergmanclassic sees the real-life power couple play the warring spouses.

It kicks off in November. Dusseldorp’s most notable performance is the lead role in the Foxtel Showcase series A Place to Call Home. She plays nurse Sarah Adams, who has returned to Australia after 20 years abroad to start a new life. She ends up clashing with wealthy matriarch Elizabeth Bligh, played byNoni Hazlehurst.

Season five will air on Foxtel Showcase from October 8. Originally published as http://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/marta-dusseldorp-renting-out-paddington-terrace/news-story/6102e25b1eb3d8ca89ef56c6f9a39a1d. The Max Planck Institute has plotted up to 600 ‘death stars’ – wandering stars likely to pass within 16.3 light years – will plow through our Oort cloud in the next million years. There’s a ‘Death Star’ headed our way, bringing with it an icy hail of destruction. But there’s still time to linger over a Star Wars sequel or three (hundred thousand). And it’s not the only one: There are up to two dozen such ‘Death Stars’ likely cut within 3.26 light years of our Solar System. Another 600 could blunder past at 16.3 light years — all close enough to topple distant comets down the gravity well towards the inner planets — including Earth.

Has used data collected by the to update his calculations of how many wandering stars are likely to stumble into the Oort cloud — an enormous ‘bubble’ of rubble that surrounds our Sun — and how often. Dr Coryn Bailer-Jones found that within a typical million years, between 490 and 600 stars will pass the Sun within a distance of 16.3 light-years or less. Some 19 to 24 stars will pass at 3.26 light-years (1 parsec) or less. But don’t rush out to buy life insurance just yet. The earliest close encounter is still hundreds of thousands of years away. And it will possibly take tens of thousands of years more before the fallout of its passing comes our way. “Impacts with regional or even global consequences are exceedingly rare, and occur at a rate of no more than one per million years,” Dr Bailer-Jones says.

“Also, monitoring systems give us a fairly complete inventory of larger asteroids and comets, none of which is currently on a collision course with Earth.”. HIP-85605 is the closest ‘Death Star’, predicted to cross through our Oort Cloud beginning some 240,000 years from now. Source:Supplied PRIME CONTENDER An earlier paper detected 14 wandering stars that will pass within three light years of Earth. To put all this in perspective: Our closest neighbouring star is Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf some 4 light years away Bailer-Jones tailored his initial study to include all 50,000 stars upon which we had accurate ‘fixes’ for at that time — including their distances, directions and velocities. Data collected by the Gaia satellite has since considerably expanded this dataset.

And while the number of ‘Death Stars’ has since been almost doubled, remains the most likely to become our first and closest encounter. The wayward orange dwarf star is on an intercept course with our solar system. Odds are as high as 90 per cent it will crash into our Oort cloud sometime between 240,000 and 470,000 years from now. Architxt Ttf Download. It is currently 16 light years away, approaching from the direction of the Hercules constellation.

It will likely skim past our Solar System at a mere 0.13 to 0.65 light years (roughly 8000 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun). Another seems close behind. The star designated Gliese 710 has been calculated as having a 90 per cent chance of coming within our sphere of influence.

Currently lurking some 64 light years away in the Serpens constellation, it’s expected to land in our neighbourhood sometime between 1.3 and 1.5 million years from now. We’ve already experienced a ‘near-miss’: The white dwarf Van Maanen’s star — fortuitously a ‘burnt-out’ star — came close to our Sun some 15,000 years ago. Exactly what impact its passing had on the Oort cloud is as yet unknown. Threat analysis Can these wandering stars end life on Earth? Source:Supplied HIT-AND-MISS In the face of a fully armed an operational Death Star such as HIP-85605 or Gliese 710, Admiral Akbar would rightly say we “can’t repel firepower of that magnitude”. Stars are impressive. They’re fractious.

They’re thermonuclear. Even our own — a somewhat humble, small specimen — can cast worrisome clouds of superheated plasma our way. It may sound like an interstellar game of billiards.

In many ways it is. But even when they arrive, Swinburn University astrophysicist Dr Alan Duffy say’s not to expect being swallowed by a star. The scale of things is simply too great. Instead, the threat will be what happens to the masses of comets orbiting in our Solar System’s outskirts — out to as far as one light-year. “Objects hardly ever meet in space — the distances are so huge — but the gravitational influence of a star is enormous, even something a light-year away can rattle the loosely held Oort Cloud objects,” Dr Duffy says.

“(But) there’s no doubt that nearby stars in the past have nudged Oort objects into falling towards the inner solar system.“. Astrophysicist Dr Alan Duffy talks ‘Death Stars’ and why they’ll take 500,000 years to reach us.

So the real questions are: Are we really in the firing line, what is being fired at us — and what are the chances of a bullseye? We’re fairly safe down here.

It’s taken millions of years, but Jupiter has managed to clean up most of the inner Solar System by pulling wayward comets and asteroids into its heavy embrace. But it is a fragile balance. Those distant, tumbling mountains of rock and ice can be sent wobbling towards us. The fear is Earth — and all the inner planets — could be subjected to a bombardment not seen for millions of years: ‘Death Star’ Gamma Microscopii (HIP103738) appears to have already drifted to within a light-year of our Sun by 3,850,000 years ago. There are two impact craters on Earth that could possibly be attributed to this event. The star Eta Carinae has exploded, sending a jet of radiation into deep space. Picture: ESA / NASA Source:Supplied BAKE’N’SHAKE If a ‘Death Star’ was a hot one, could its powerful UV radiation be added to the planet-killing arsenal it unleashes?

Such radiation could tear apart the DNA of living all things once our thin line of defence — the ozone layer — is stripped away. As Dr Duffy says, it’d have to get extremely close — impossibly close — for its radiation and gravity to have any direct effect on our planet. Gamma Microscopii, the G-7 giant which whizzed past some four million years ago, is believed to have been about 2.5 times the size of our own Sun.

Its radiation is not known to have had any effect on our world. “None of the stars that will likely come close to us are particularly large or bright meaning that they won’t affect the Earth with their UV or heating directly,” he says. “A star 100 times more luminous than our Sun would have to get as close to the Earth as Jupiter for it to be brighter than the Sun in our sky. If it’s a smaller star then it would have to get even closer. Long before then the gravity of this intruder would already have likely flung the Earth out of our orbit.

Thankfully no star is predicted to come that close!”. V838 Monocerotis star gas clouds billow outwards as the star explodes. Picture: NASA Source:Supplied SUPERNOVAS Each ‘Death Star’ will take about 30,000 years to pass through our Oort Cloud. We will remain in their ‘spheres’ of influence’ for tens of thousands of years more.

There is a remote chance one of them may reach the end of its life cycle and explode during that time. “We see radioactive isotopes on Earth which point to nearby supernovas over the past few million years,” said Dr Bailer-Jones. But Dr Duffy points out the odds of one of these stars exploding when close enough to have any impact (and that means within several light years) is infinitesimal. “However the main reason this isn’t a worry is that none of the nearby stars that are drifting towards us from this study are big enough to explode as a supernova,” he says. But these stars have a typically Imperial problem: Accuracy. And, by the time the first of these Death Stars arrive, our race will either already be dead — or so highly evolved as to simply not care. “While a direct collision by a large comet would be a disaster for the Earth we’re actually a very small target,” Dr Duffy says.

“A much bigger target is the gas giant Jupiter with an enormous gravitational pull that attracts the comets and ‘cleans’ up the Solar System. Yet even Jupiter is tiny on that scale so it’s much more likely that any comets that tumble in towards us will just pass harmlessly by.”. Space is big, really big A mountain-sized asteroid toppled towards the inner planets from the Oort cloud could take hundreds of thousands of years before it swings past the Sun.

Picture: NASA/JPL-Caltech Source:Supplied TIME IS ON OUR SIDE Even if these stars did tumble any Oort objects out of orbit, these could take up to two million years to drift into the inner planets. Many of the stars set to cross our path are dwarf stars smaller than our own.

This means the potential influence they may have on our Oort cloud will be limited. We can get more Bothan-like data (without the casualties) right now: Instead of R2D2, the carrier of such secret plans would be the. It is helping pinpoint the tracks of these deadly interstellar bodies to determine how many are on the way — and which ones may have done us damage in the past. It’s currently cataloguing over a billion objects in our interstellar neighbourhood. “The Gaia satellite is currently in space creating the best map yet of all the nearby stars allowing us to know to great accuracy just which of the billions of stars in our galaxy will likely ever get close enough to cause us problems,” Dr Duffy says. “Even though the galaxy contains very many stars,”, “the spaces between them are huge. So even over the (long) life of our galaxy so far, the probability of any two stars have actually collided — as opposed to just coming close — is extremely small.”.

Rohan checks out the view from the other side of the fence. Picture: Phil Hillyard Source:News Corp Australia If the Swans were framing a market for the player most likely to end up in the crowd, Rohan would be a short-priced favourite. It’s not just his blinding speed which puts him in danger of not pulling up in time he’s the sort who loves to get involved in everything. His latest occupation outside the club is working with the juniors at the Swans Academy. “Every Monday I head down to the academy and help out,” Rohan said. “I’m interested in coaching, I love coaching kids and watching them develop so I help out.

It’s good for me to learn about coaching styles and work with the coaches there. I can’t sit still so instead of going home to sit on the couch I head over to help.”. CHAMPION Winx cruised through her final workout this morning, pleasing trainer Chris Waller and jockey Hugh Bowman ahead of the Group 2 $250,000 Chelmsford Stakes at Royal Randwick on Saturday. Winx galloped solo wide out on the Rosehill course proper and although she wasn’t out to make time, she showed that her tough first-up run to win the Warwick Stakes nearly two weeks ago has not taken anything out of her. Winx having a track gallop ahead of her run in the Group 2 Tattersalls Chelmsford Stakes Saturday!

— Australian Turf Club (@atc_races) The mighty mare wore the ear muffs in the gallop which she will do on Saturday in an endeavour to ensure she doesn’t become fractious in the barriers and miss the start badly gain like she did in the Warwick Stakes. “Her engine is quite unique,’’ Bowman said. “I’ve never ridden another horse like her. “She has the rare ability to overcome adversity is what makes her a true champion.’’.

Winx prepares to do her last piece of trackwork ahead of Saturday’s Chelmsford Stakes. Source:Twitter Waller said Winx will strip fitter again for the Chelmsford where she is $1.08 favourite on TAB Fixed Odds to win her 19th race in succession. “She is 3-4kg lighter than she was before the Warwick Stakes,’’ Waller said. “We gave her a really solid gallop on Tuesday where she was very impressive so this morning was more a maintenance gallop. “We are really pleased with her, she has done everything right since the Warwick Stakes.’’ This is Winx before every media call.

Doesn’t turn a hair — Brad Gray (@BradJGray) Originally published as http://www.news.com.au/sport/superracing/winx-ready-to-nail-19th-straight-win-at-250k-chelmsford-stakes/news-story/c79a79d12e7be36dbc1d19. Ethan Brown steers Motown Lil to victory at Sandown Hillside.

Source:Getty Images Mare Bonus D’Oro, who made it three wins on end, is a granddaughter of She’s Archie, who put the trainer on the map when she finished second in the 2003 Melbourne Cup. Download Naruto Shippuden Ep 400 Sub Indo. The winner of the final race, Night’s Watch, has been entered by his owners, OTI Syndications, for the Melbourne Cup. 3 wins today at metro level for, after steering the talented Speedeor home. — Racing.com (@Racing) Vasil’s new Hero TONY Vasil only trains a handful of horses but three-year-old colt Lina’s Hero, who ran away with the Benchmark 1300m race at Sandown, could propel him back into the spotlight. Jockey Ryan Maloney stamped him “as Caulfield Guineas quality” and had “untapped ability” after his four-length win.

Lina’s Hero is by Elvstroem who Vasil trained to win five Group 1s but who was a disappointment at stud and was banished to France two years ago. The best horse he has sired is Hucklebuck, but Lina’s Hero is showing the potential to be even better.

Lina’s Hero showed stakes-race potential with his win at Sandown Hillside. Source:AAP Blondie on Group 1 path BRENDAN McCarthy will set Blondie for the Group 1 Thousand Guineas after the filly won the Benchmark 70 (1000m) on Wednesday. “This was a good stepping stone for her,” McCarthy said. Blondie won her debut race at Moonee Valley before she finished last in the Blue Diamond.

McCarthy was shocked by the run but later found out she had a hairline fracture of the pelvis. “To have her come back is great,” he said. Originally published as http://www.news.com.au/sport/superracing/apprentice-ethan-brown-grabs-spotlight-with-three-winners-at-sandown-hillside/news-story/9acafc65a2c693bbe42d30. Australia’s large expatriate community in flood-ravaged Houston has come together to help each other and the thousands of other residents forced to flee their homes. The southern Texas city, the fourth biggest in the US, is largely under water after 124cm of rain from tropical storm Harvey fell – a record for the continental US.

Boats, rafts and helicopters continued to scour suburbs to save residents who tried to stay in their homes but were then left in life and death situations as flood levels rose. Geelong-raised David Bryant, 41, who works for BHP Billiton in Houston and is president of the Houston Lonestars Aussie rules team, said Australians were opening their homes to others forced out of their houses. “The Aussie community is spread out around so there is always a mate not too far away,” Mr Bryant said. He was unaware of any members of the close-knit Aussie community forced to evacuate to one of the many shelters. “The people who have had water go into their homes have been able to manage that in their house,” he said.

“It is not to the point where they have had to evacuate.” Houston is America’s energy capital and the site of US offices for major Australian companies including BHP Billiton, Brambles, Lend Lease, Santos and Woodside. Mr Bryant, whose wife Sonia is visiting family in Geelong, said luckily his three-storey townhouse near downtown Houston was not in the path of the floods and power went off on Monday but had been restored. He has taken in a friend, his seven-month pregnant fiancee and their cats.

The roads in the area were safe enough on Tuesday for Mr Bryant and the couple to drive a few kilometres to George R. Brown Convention Center, the Houston area’s largest shelter, to help the Red Cross. They have been distributing blankets food and other aid to the 10,000 soaked Houston evacuees inside the massive complex. “It’s basically as if the Melbourne Convention Centre was opened up.

It’s on that scale,” Mr Bryant said. “It’s a pretty big operation.” Rain from the slow moving tropical storm Harvey is expected to fall for the rest of the week and it will take years for the city to recover. Local officials have so far reported at least nine deaths. Neighbouring state Louisiana is also being hit hard. The US National Guard is preparing to deploy 20,000 to 30,000 troops to Texas to aid the response and recovery effort.

US president Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump flew to Texas on Tuesday, but will visit Corpus Christi and Austin and stay away from Houston to ensure the focus of authorities was on the rescue effort. “We want to do it better than ever before,” Mr Trump, describing his planned response to the hurricane, said. “We want to be looked at in five years, in 10 years from now as, this is the way to do it. “This was of epic proportion. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this.” http://www.news.com.au/world/breaking-news/aussies-helping-out-in-epic-houston-floods/news-story/91ed3ad70c6d461a2da14ce5fbfa8915.

FOO Fighters dynamic duo Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins aren’t making any promises about Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up making it onto their covers list for their world tour. The pair slipped into Sydney on Monday to spruik their upcoming new record Concrete and Gold and play an impromptu gig with their covers band Chevy Metal at the Oxford Art Factory. After the band announced the impromptu gig on social media early on Tuesday morning. Chevy Metal was started by Hawkins several years ago when the Fooeys were on a break.

They perform songs by Queen, David Bowie, Van Halen, Black Sabbath and from some of their other favourite bands. Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins from The Foo Fighters and Chevy Metal.

Picture: Richard Dobson Source:News Limited The much-loved rockers blew up social media when they Rickrolled the Summer Sonic festival in Japan recently by inviting Rick Astley on stage to perform his enduring pop anthem Never Gonna Give You Up. Grohl revealed on Tuesday that the band had been jamming on the song in the warm-up room before their set when they saw Astley was also on the festival bill. After a few runs of the song, they suddenly realised it shared a similar arrangement to Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit and later performed a mash-up of the two chart-topping hits with Astley joining them on stage. The band famously blasted the song at controversial Westboro Baptist Church members who protested outside a Foo Fighters concert in Kansas City two years ago.

“We will never forget that song now. Once we started jamming it backstage, we kept Rickrolling ourselves all day long,” Grohl said. “We were cracking up when we realised it had the same arrangement as Smells Like Teen Spirit. We didn’t know if we were going to do it or not. “Halfway through the gig, I see standing at the side of the stage and I walked over to him in the middle of a keyboard solo and say ‘Hi, I’m Dave’ and he says “Hi, I’m Rick’, I walked back over to the guys and said ‘We’ve gotta do it.’” The band’s first studio record in three years, concrete and Gold is released on September 15 and features a surprising cast of special guests including Grohl’s friend Paul McCartney, Boyz II Men’s Shawn Stockman, who he met in a studio carpark, and The Kills’ Alison Mosshart.

Foo Fighters will tour Australia next year. Picture: AFP Source:AFP There is also a secret superstar — “probably the biggest pop star in the world”, according to Grohl, who contributes backing vocals on one of the songs. While many people have speculated it is a female pop artist, with Lady Gaga, Adele and Taylor Swift thrown into the rumour mill, Grohl let slip in Sydney that the secret backing singer is a “he”. So perhaps it is Justin Timberlake or the other Justin, Bieber. After teasing fans with their Chevy Metal gig on Tuesday, the entire Foo Fighters band will return to Australia to tour next year. A VETERINARY nurse at an expensive private clinic in Scotland deliberately poisoned her pet dog in a bizarre case of animal cruelty.

Georgina Bretman injected her black-and-white cocker spaniel, Florence, with a drug that made the animal collapse and suffer from convulsions and seizures, The damage was so severe that the two-year-old dog could have ended up in a coma or even dead. Vets at the out-of-hours practise where Bretman worked became suspicious after Florence was brought in for emergency treatment on several separate occasions — always suffering from the same mysterious symptoms. Bretman was convicted after a trial at Glasgow Sheriff Court of causing the animal unnecessary suffering. Although no explanation was offered as to why the 28-year-old had harmed her pet, the court was told that she was an “attention-seeker”. On one occasion her employer gave Bretman an evening off — then correctly predicted that, within a few hours, the dog would suddenly become ill and be brought back to the surgery requiring emergency treatment.

Sheriff Joan Kerr found Bretman guilty of injecting her own dog with insulin resulting in her requiring immediate treatment to “avoid coma or death”. Florence the dog was rehomed after the allegations against Bretman came to light and the court heard she had returned to good health. Bretman started working as a veterinary nurse in 2011 for Pet A&E — a clinic in the Kinning Park area of Glasgow which provided care for animals outside normal working hours.

Her former employer Lesley Herd grew suspicious after the dog needed emergency treatment on several occasions after collapsing, twitching and vomiting. Every time, tests showed a low glucose level. During Bretman’s trial, Mrs Herd said: “The dog was fine between episodes so I really didn’t know what was going on with the dog at all, we couldn’t understand why she was having these episodes.” In evidence, Bretman denied the charge and said she wasn’t responsible and only ever wanted to find out what was wrong with Flo.

Defence advocate Dale Hughes put to her: “It might be suggested you took a dislike to the dog, that’s why you harmed her.” Bretman said: “Not at all, I put a lot of energy in. She was my companion.” Since being taken out of Bretman’s care in 2013, Flo has been free of any problems. Sheriff Kerr deferred sentence until next month for reports.

This story was originally published in and is reproduced here with their permission. PINK delivered a showstopping speech about body image and self-acceptance at MTV Video Music Awards. The What About Us singer made the stirring statement while accepting her Video Vanguard Award from Ellen DeGeneres. Speaking on stage, Pink said her daughter Willow, 6, had recently told her, “Mama I am the ugliest girl I know”.

“And I said, ‘huh?’ And she was like, ‘Yeah, I look like a boy with long hair,’” Pink told the crowd at The Forum in Los Angeles. “And my brain went to, ‘Oh, my god.

Where is this coming from? Who said this? Can I kick a 6-year-old’s ass?’ But I didn’t say anything,” Pink said. Pink and Ellen DeGeneres. Source:Getty Images “They say that I look like a boy, or I am too masculine, too many opinions, my body is too strong.

“And I said to her, ‘do you see me growing my hair?’ She said, ‘no, Mama.’ I said, ‘do you see me changing my body?’ ‘No, Mama.’ “Do you see me changing the way I present myself to the world?’ ‘No, Mama.’ “So, baby girl, we don’t change, we take the gravel and the shell and we make a pearl. “We help other people to change so that they can see more kinds of beauty.” ‘MY PEE BAG IS KIND OF FULL’ Katy Perry raised eyebrows for her bizarre costumes and hosting style. In one of the strangest VMAs openings ever, the Swish Swish singer was suspended from the roof, dressed in a silver space suit. “My pee bag is kind of full,” the host said, in one of her attempts at humour.

Her intergalactic-themed opening monologue failed to impress, with celebs including DeGeneres and Bleachers singer Jack Antonoff seen looking visibly confused and bored. Nicki Minaj, dressed in a latex basketball ref’s outfit, joined Katy Perry on stage. Source:AFP STYLE STARS Outfits at the VMAs seemed tamer than usual with many celebrities opting for elegant dresses on arrival and saving daring ensembles for the stage. In one of the more standout looks, rapper Nicki Minaj — who closed the show with Perry dressed as a basketball referee — wore an eye-popping pink latex crop top and pants, teamed with diamond cuffs and a $1 million choker. The pink trend continued for Malibu singer Miley Cyrus who stunned in hot fuchsia during her performance, and stripped off her skirt to reveal barely-there hotpants.