Living a fast life often leaves no time to make a pause and put your life in order. Sooner or later you find out that you’re overwhelmed with tasks, you have no time for your personal life and you just can’t cope with anything. A few years ago I experienced exactly the same situation. I felt like my life was full of unnecessary stuff, which prevented me from focusing on something really important. I just seemed to lose control over my life. If you feel the same, it’s time to simplify your life. The earlier you start doing it, the earlier you feel happy and content. Changing your habits and way of life isn’t so hard if you know some tips and tricks. Read on to find out efficient ways to unclutter your life.

Start with your home
Indeed, if you want to unclutter your life you should start with something simpler, for example your home. The way you arrange your routines or household items reflects how organized you’re. No wonder you feel distracted if you live in a messy house. I didn’t believe it, but creating order in your house can create order in your mind. Devote a weekend to unclutter your rooms, closet, kitchen. Clean everything thoroughly and throw out old, unnecessary and broken things that just clutter your dwelling. If you work from home, organizing your desk is of critical importance. You should get rid of unnecessary programs and files on your computer as well. When you finish with your home, you can move on to more complicated things.

Accomplish what is undone
You might not notice that, but every task that you put off gradually develop into a huge pile of undone things. Even if you don’t think about them, the feeling that something should be accomplished drains your energy and strength. To call a classmate, start learning a new language daily, buy a gym membership…the list may be endless and it depends only on your imagination. Unless you carry out all the undone tasks you will feel overwhelmed and helpless. Try to list everything you should do and make a point of fulfilling at least several tasks a day. It requires a lot of courage, but when you finish with the last point from the list you will definitely breathe easier.

Reconsider your friends list
Your surrounding has major effect on your well-being, mindset and behavior. While some friends encourage you to be a better person, there are many toxic people who undermine your self-esteem and just waste your time. Keep your friends list simple. Delete phone numbers of people you don’t communicate with, limit your appointments and maintain relationship only with those who make you feel comfortable. Understand that you owe people nothing. And you shouldn’t feel guilty just because you don’t want to get along with someone. Don’t forget to check your friends list on Facebook either. I bet you hardly know the half of the people. Trimming your friends list will greatly help you to unclutter your life.

Find out your ultimate goal
If you live without a sense of purpose you risk wasting your time on utterly wrong things. Sure, you cannot create a detailed plan of your life for many years ahead. But if you really want to unclutter your life, you do need a blueprint. Learn to set goals and see your destination. This way, you’ll scarcely lose the direction or get lost in your life. Having an ultimate goal makes you get up earlier with determination and work hard each day. It’s the source of motivation and inspiration. Moreover, if you know your priorities you won’t spend time on useless things and have more time to concentrate on reaching your goal.

 Learn to be self-disciplined and organized
It’s really problematic for most people, and I was no exception. Nobody has more than 24 hours a day, but the fact is that some people manage to do a lot during this time, while others cannot get done anything. I always lacked a sense of discipline and it took me lots of time and efforts to develop this feature. First of all, you should start planning your week on Sunday evening. Develop a habit to wake up and go to bed at the same time every single day. Organize your household chores and you’ll see how simple the life can be. Don’t think that being organized is boring. You can always alter your plans and carve out time for something else. Being organized just means you take control over your time and life.

Consider taking a break
If you cannot push forward, consider taking a short break to think over your life. Sometimes people feel overwhelmed because they do the wrong job or maintain a toxic relationship. You need some time to realize it. A short break will help you look at your life from another perspective and see everything that you should change. Perhaps, you just need to get enough sleep and restore your energy. Chances are that you return an absolutely different person with a wealth of fresh ideas and enthusiasm. After a break you’ll find it easier to unclutter your life and keep it simple.

Learn to ignore
People constantly live a stressful life and they desperately try to eliminate stress factors. In fact you’ll never eliminate stressors from your life no matter how hard you try. You should just change your attitude. In other words, you should learn to ignore a great deal of things in your life to feel happy and satisfied. People often worry about situations that they cannot control, which also makes them feel overwhelmed. You should understand what is really important to you and what can be neglected. Life is simpler than you may think.

Uncluttering your life is a great challenge that requires a lot of time and efforts. But when you manage to put your life in order, you should do your best not to slack off. Once you develop a system, stick to it and enjoy yourself. Make use of these tips to achieve peace of mind and create a more enjoyable life. If you have any other tips, share them with me, please.

EVERYONE needs love, but for Simeon Muchemedzi, love has been elusive.

His last attempt to fall in love was at the age of 36 when angry parents of his 15-year-old lover set dogs on him in Ascot, Gweru.

Muchemedzi, now, 50, has vowed not to let his deep need for a partner threaten his dear life.

But for someone who has already gone past the middle ages as a single man, societal pressure to marry has more than intensified and Muchemedzi has found himself searching again. Being a bachelor and a virgin at 50 is something that attracts scorn from youths of today who lose their virginity at puberty.

For Muchemedzi, a pastor at a local church, virginity is a gift he wants to give his bride on their honeymoon.

Virginity is no longer that sacred as the present generation has not kept it sacrosanct. Virginity soaps for girls now litter the streets. The soaps are used to hoodwink suitors who are obsessed by the 'old' phenomenon kept sacred by the past generations.

When the news crew interviewed Muchemedzi  about his newspaper vending business, the bachelor was hopeful  one day he would find a bride who preferably should be a virgin.

A chat with the clergyman leaves you in stitches as he tells his untold story of celibacy for 50 long years. At his age, Muchemedzi should be having grandchildren, running around him and asking for folktales, but he is lonely.

"I tried the love game when I proposed a Form 3 student from Ascot, but the parents threatened to beat me up and set dogs on me. In fear, I ran away and never found the love of my life. She is probably married now," Muchemedzi said.

Strangely, Muchemedzi prefers school girls and never bothered himself with single mothers or divorcees of his age.

"I want to marry a virgin like myself and you can only find those in school. I think I can settle for an 18-year-old girl," he chuckled.

Staying alone at that age means doing virtually everything for oneself and Muchemedzi, who says he is a devout Christian, enjoys cooking.

"I am self-sufficient and happy too. I make sure I live a comfortable, stress free life," he said.

Facing stigma from society, Muchemedzi is always viewed as a weird person by neighbours who taunt him. Muchemedzi who led a breakaway group from a well-known church said he has not yet found a suitable wife from his congregation.

Still searching at a cool 50, Muchemedzi would go to the ends of the earth to find love which nature has not been fair enough to afford him.

"I know that one day she will come and I am still waiting. I do not want to get married for convenience’s sake  because that is not right. Neither do I want to divorce my wife when I eventually get married," he said.

The search for a bride goes on for the bachelor who hopes to walk down the aisle with the love of his life one of these fines days.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai yesterday hinted that Nelson Chamisa could be co-opted into the MDC national executive.

The former prime minister said in an exclusive interview in Harare yesterday that the 36-year-old's sudden fall from power does not mean he stops taking a prominent role in the MDC.

Chamisa, touted as a potential successor to Tsvangirai, is the highest-ranking MDC official to lose re-election to a challenger since the movement rose to prominence in 1999. It is likely to go down as one of the most stunning defeats in MDC history.

Chamisa lost to Douglas Mwonzora, who is now the new MDC secretary-general.

"Nelson Chamisa, (Tapiwa) Mashakada, whoever may have felt they have not succeeded; they are leaders of the party," said Tsvangirai, while also referring to Mashakada's loss to Theresa Makone in the hot-contest for the treasurer-general's post.

"They cannot just be card-carrying members. They have responsibilities to carry out. Losing a position does not mean you lose your role in the struggle. You can be deployed elsewhere."

Tsvangirai said Chamisa's loss was a repeat of the stunning upset at the 2011 MDC congress held in Bulawayo, in which party veteran Elias Mudzuri lost the organising secretary post to Chamisa.

"In 2011, (Elias) Mudzuri was not elected as organising secretary. We co-opted him into the executive. He played his role in the executive effectively," Tsvangirai said.

Supporters of the Kuwadzana East MP allege that Chamisa resisted a raft of constitutional changes that had been proposed by Tsvangirai, and which were meant to dilute the powers of the secretary-general and centralise power in the MDC leader's office.

This allegedly did not sit well with Tsvangirai and his supporters. But Tsvangirai denied that there was a rift between him and Chamisa.

"There is no fallout between me and Chamisa, everyone knows. I don't know why people want to find fissures that don't exist," he said.

Describing his relationship with Chamisa as a "father-son" relationship, Tsvangirai said  the former student leader, who had until the weekend never lost an election since helping form the MDC in 1999, could still rebound.

"Well, it's a sad outcome, you know my relationship with Nelson goes beyond just national, it's personal; it's a father-son relationship. However, I want to say that it's a temporary setback. I am sure he is young enough to rebound," Tsvangirai said.

Ominously for Chamisa, the weekend party congress had resolved to concentrate power in the MDC leader's office ahead of the ballot. But Tsvangirai denied accusations that he was centralising power in his office. He said sometimes instability arises because of confusion of roles.

"And you need role clarity to ensure there is more coherence than situations where there appears to be competition rather than cooperation. I am a believer in democracy. I have fought a dictatorship all my life. I cannot believe that centralising power in an individual is helpful to the organisation," Tsvangirai said.

Vice President Mujuru to get arrested soon, dummy docket already prepared A Zanu PF faction led by Emmerson Mnangagwa is allegedly pushing for the prosecution of their bitter rival, Joice Mujuru, ahead of next month's congress.

According to the weekly strategists, who include several legal and academic brains,  they are convinced that the arrest and subsequent trial for corruption would severely embarrass and weaken Mujuru, who heads the rival camp.

"Mnangagwa and his supporters are sensing victory over Mujuru. President (Robert) Mugabe's recent support for the faction has given them confidence and they want to finish her (Mujuru) off," said one of the sources, who receive regular intelligence briefings on the dynamics in the ruling party.

The plotters, he said, have met several times and prepared a dummy docket after consulting with three high profile sympathizers (names withheld) in the judiciary and the Ministry of Justice headed by Mnangagwa.

The Mnangagwa team is also banking on support from Grace Mugabe to persuade her husband to approve the prosecution of Mujuru.

"It would be a real coup if Mugabe agrees to the plan. He has come a long way with Mai Mujuru to treat her like that, but then, nothing is impossible," added the source.

The Mnangagwa camp is reportedly working closely with disgruntled Indian and Kenyan investors with whom the Mujuru family partnered in running duty free shops at the Harare International Airport. It intends to use them as the complainants in the case.

According to recent reports in the state-controlled media, the investors poured $1 million into the venture. But the deal turned sour when a Mujuru business advisor complained that the partners were not bringing value to the business, resulting in them being booted out.

The investors are said to have approached Mnangagwa and his backers with their case when they learnt of the intensifying factional war. Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo, (who controls the state media) is said to be fighting for Mnangagwa, together with Water Minister Saviour Kasukuwere and Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa.

The media reports accused Mujuru of illegally receiving payments from the investors, and this, the sources said, forms the backbone of the charges being prepared.

It was not immediately clear if the aggrieved business partners were willing to take the witness stand, but the sources said they were taking advantage of the succession battles in Zanu (PF) to settle scores with Mujuru.

Mnangagwa, as usual, ignored several calls from The Zimbabwean, and Moyo, Kasukuwere and Chinamasa were not available to comment. But a weekly state newspaper, whose EMPLOYEES insist that Moyo is directing news against the Mujuru faction, implied that the vice president could indeed be prosecuted.

A recent front page report argued that only Mugabe was immune to prosecution. Critics maintain this could be a way of setting the agenda for Mujuru's prosecution.

Rugare Gumbo, the ruling party's information secretary who is reported to be siding with Mujuru, last week accused the Mnangagwa faction of using the public media to fight factional wars.

The sources said the plotters were banking on Mugabe's support for the prosecution and were in a dilemma about whether to rope in Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri, who they have publicly accused in the state media of belonging to the Mujuru camp.

Grace Mugabe has repeatedly accused Mujuru of corruption, fraud and incompetence. Moyo, Kasukuwere and Mnangagwa featured prominently at her recent rallies, together with the outgoing secretary for women's affairs, Oppah Muchinguri .

Grace, while addressing a select group of war veterans recently, insinuated that Mnangagwa should take over the position of vice president from Mujuru, whom she openly urged to resign or face being expelled at congress.

Mujuru has insisted that she is innocent. At a Zanu (PF) politburo meeting last week where Mugabe was present, she is said to have challenged her rivals to provide evidence that she is corrupt.

Peering out at the narrow stretch of gunmetal grey sea separating the small harbour from an island at the southern tip of the vast Stockholm archipelago, Johannes gave a shrug.
“I am 99% sure there is something out there,” he said. “But I’m 100% sure they won’t find it. One tiny submarine has got the entire Swedish navy tied up, all 200 sailors, with neither the resources nor the weapons to deal with it.”

The 58-year-old Swedish naval commander, who asked not to be named, was having a day off on Tuesday, strolling along the sea wall in Nynäshamn, 25 miles (40km) south of Stockholm, while the fleet continued its search for a suspected Russian submarine.

Thirty years ago Johannes commanded a sonar-equipped craft that regularly responded to alleged Russian submarine incursions for more than a decade – a period when Sweden was routinely gripped with cold war panic.

“We knew they were there because we could see the traces they left on the sea floor,” he said.

But apart from a Soviet craft that ran aground near Karlskrona in 1981, they never found a single submarine.

Battleships, minesweepers, helicopters and more than 200 troops have scoured an area about 30km to 60km from the Swedish capital since Friday after reports of a “manmade object” in the water. Supreme Commander General Sverker Göranson told reporters on Tuesdaythere was “probable underwater activity” and that he was ready to use “armed force” to bring the vessel to the surface.

Sweden’s armed forces did not respond to requests to comment on media headlines that the navy had “made contact” and was “ready to bomb the object”.

Frantic efforts to locate the culprit have seen the navy crisscross the area in response to possible sightings. After the focus of the search shifted once again on Tuesday, a drenched Finnish camera crew returned to shore in Nynäshamn after their boat was swamped by the wake of a navy ship heading north.

Fishermen rubbed their hands at the chance to hire out their craft to the Scandinavian press pack for 1,200 kronor (£100) an hour. “It’s good business,” said Mats Nilsson, 47. “The local people pay no attention – the Russians have always been here, they never went away. That sub probably showed itself just to attract attention while the real operation takes place elsewhere.”

Despite the submarine hunt – and the media circus – locals seemed determined that life should go on as normal.

“We remember how they used to come here and drop depth charges on the mink and the herring, they never found anything,” says Lennard Lundqvist, 67, referring to research suggesting that early Soviet submarine scares were no more than bubbles and squeaks emitted by Baltic wildlife.

“The navy are more trouble than the Russians – they stop me setting my nets,” said Lundqvist, who has fished here for 40 years. Last year he strayed too close to the nearby Muskö naval base and was fined 2,600 kronor (£223).

Memories of the cold war are still fresh in this part of Sweden, and the period’s physical embodiment is on the island of Muskö, 30 minutes’ drive away. In the 1950s a cavernous underground naval base capable of withstanding a nuclear attack was created there. With 12 miles of subterranean roads, the complex – top-secret for decades – resembles a set from a James Bond movie.

The cloak-and-dagger excitement of the current submarine chase has seen Sweden’s media seize on scraps of information from the armed forces and public. Newspapers have hired helicopters to follow the search from the air. More than 100 sightings of “suspicious objects” have been reported.

The hype receded briefly after a “mysterious man in black”, allegedly sought by the secret services as a possible Russian special forces agent, turned out to be a pensioner called Ove who was doing a spot of angling. A photo of a submarine turned out to be of a Swedish one. A popular freesheet led its front page on Tuesday with remarks by a former commander-in-chief of the armed forces that there was no chance of finding a submarine: “We looked for 10 years and didn’t find one,” he told the paper.

Conspiracy theories are rife, given that the new minority government of Social Democrats and Greens presents its first budget . Already the new finance minister has pledged more money for Sweden’s military, apparently in response to the submarine panic, even though the Green party campaigned on defence cuts.

“It has been blown out of all proportion,” said Simon, 22, a telephone salesman from Gotland, the large Baltic island often seen as a possible point of entry for Russian forces into Sweden. “I can’t see what there is for the Russians there,” he said as he stepped off the ferry at Nynäshamn.

“No one is worried or even paying [the scare] any attention.” Emily, 34, a trainee nurse living on the island of Nämdö, had not even heard about it until she came to the mainland on Tuesday.

Olle Jatko, the officer in charge in Nynäshamn police station, was beaming. “We’ve seen it all before, it’s all calm in the town,” he said. “But Sweden must join Nato,” he added. “We need more money for the military.”

A Canadian man killed by police on Monday after trying to run over two soldiers in Quebec “had become radicalised,” the government said after the first such incident in Canada since the country joined the fight against Islamic State.
The Canadian government did not specify what it meant by radicalised but in the past has used the term to refer to Canadians who become supporters of militant Islamist groups.

Canadian media, citing police, identified the driver as Martin Couture-Rouleau, a resident of the town of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, near Montreal. A neighbour, speaking on condition that her name not be used, told Reuters the man became radicalised about a year ago after getting involved with extremists.

Quebec police shot and killed the 25-year-old driver after a chase following the incident. One of the two soldiers who was run over had life-threatening injuries. Police did not say whether the soldiers were in uniform.

“The individual who struck the two [Canadian armed forces] members with his car is known to federal authorities, including the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team,” said a statement from the Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper’s office.

“Federal authorities have confirmed that there are clear indications that the individual had become radicalised.”

The incident took place in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, about 25 miles (40km) south-east of Montreal.

After the collision the driver sped off and was chased by police. He lost control of the car, which landed in a ditch. He was shot after confronting officers, police said.

Earlier in the day Randy Hoback, a member of parliament for the ruling Conservative party, referred in the House of Commons to unconfirmed reports of “a possible terror attack against two members of the Canadian armed forces”.

At the time Harper said the reports were “extremely troubling” but declined to give more details.

A spokesman for the Surete du Quebec, the provincial police, pressed as to whether the victims had been specifically targeted, said that was one of several hypotheses but stressed it would take the police days to work out what had happened.

Canada is sending six fighter jets to take part in the US-led campaign against Isis militants in Iraq.

Canadian security officials have been concerned for years about the potential threat of radicalised young men, especially those traveling abroad to join militant groups including Isis in Iraq and Syria. There was no immediate indication Rouleau had travelled abroad.

Ray Boisvert, former assistant director for intelligence at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) spy agency, said he suspected Rouleau was a lone actor who would have been difficult for authorities to stop. “It reflects what’s going on in a very active threat environment. You have far too many targets and far too many active targets,” Boisvert said.

The head of CSIS said on 9 October that “we have no information indicating an imminent attack”. But Jeff Yaworski, deputy director of operations at CSIS, on on Monday said the agency was worried about the threat posed by those returning to Canada “after having engaged in threat-related activities” abroad.

“CSIS remains concerned that [Islamic State’s] message and successful social media strategy could inspire radicalised individuals to undertake attacks here in Canada,” he told the Senate’s national defence committee.

On 9 October the Canadian public safety minister, Stephen Blaney, said police wanted to arrest 80 people who returned to the country after taking part in what he called suspected terrorism-related activities. A report issued by his ministry at the same time said “global violent extremists” had identified Canada as a target.

One of Vietnam’s best-known dissidents has been released from prison and deported to the US, where he has promised to fight to return to his home country.

Blogger Nguyen Van Hai, 62, known online as Dieu Cay, was jailed in 2012 for 12 years for disseminating “anti-state propaganda” related to his internet posts, a sentence rights activists allege was little more than trumped-up charges for his critical views on China.

“My father was the first to talk about China’s intentions [towards Vietnam],” Hai’s son Nguyen Tri Dung told the Committee to Protect Journalists last month. “Now, everybody is saying what he said about China, even government leaders.”

Hai was one of the first to criticise China’s encroaching influence over Vietnam, particularly over sovereignty issues. But the view has gained far greater hold in recent months, with anti-China riots in various cities highlighting Hanoi’s battles with Beijing over the South China Sea, which holds rich oil and gas reserves. It is believed that US senator John McCain – a former prisoner of war in Vietnam – may have helped secure Hai’s release during a visit to the country in August.

The US – which has warmed relations with Hanoi greatly as part of its “Asia pivot”, even recently ending a lethal-weapon sales ban – said it welcomed Vietnam’s decision to release Hai, considered a prisoner of conscience.

“We have consistently called for his release and the release of all other political prisoners in Vietnam,” said spokeswoman Marie Harf.

A founder of Vietnam’s Club for Free Journalists, which was set up as an alternative to state-controlled news, Hai has been in and out of detentions since 2007. Increasingly unwell, he fought against his alleged ill treatment in prison by going on repeated hunger strikes.

Just how Hai has ended up in America – rather than his home town of Saigon – is still unclear. According to the US state department, it was Hai’s decision to travel to America. But even Hai himself, and his family, recount a different tale. Speaking to Radio Free Asia, Hai’s ex-wife said he was removed suddenly from his jail cell, taken to the airport and put on a plane to Los Angeles – without any prior warning.

“They did not let [his] family know anything about his release. There was no signal or notice,” she said, claiming he phoned them briefly while in transit in Hong Kong to tell them the news. “They deported him to exile, they did not release him.”

According to Hai, Vietnam sent him abroad on Washington’s wishes.

“This trip is the decision of the US government,” he told reporters in Los Angeles. “The US government wants me to become a citizen of the US but I don’t understand why the Vietnamese government wants to deport me.”

He vowed to fight for his return back to Vietnam, as well as the return of all other Vietnamese exiles in America.

Hai is the second high-profile dissident to be welcomed in America this year. French-trained lawyer Cu Huy Ha Vu, a vocal critic of the ruling Communist party, was released from prison earlier this year and moved to the US in April.

Activists applauded Hai’s release but expressed concern over the conditions of his departure.

“It’s very good news that blogger Dieu Cay is free, but no one should forget for an instant that he should never have been in prison in the first place,” said Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division. “The Vietnam government severely persecuted him for years because he was brave enough to voice his opinions and tell inconvenient truths that leaders in Hanoi didn’t want spreading via the internet among the Vietnamese people. They should not receive applause for forcing him into exile as the price of his freedom.”

Some 26 other bloggers are still detained in Vietnam, according to Reporters Without Borders, which calls the country “the world’s third biggest prison for netizens”.

Patients in the three west African countries devastated by Ebola may be able to get transfusions of blood from survivors within weeks, the World Health Organisation says.

Unprecedented efforts are underway in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea to make experimental vaccines and treatments available in a bid to slow the escalating number of infections and save lives.

Large-scale vaccine trials, which it is hoped might protect some of those most at risk including health workers and burial teams are expected to start in January.

Blood from survivors such as the British nurse Will Pooley contains antibodies that could help the immune systems of people with Ebola to fight the virus.

Dr Marie Paule Kieny, an assistant director-general at the WHO, said a lot of work was now going on to make it possible to use blood in the epidemic-hit countries where health systems have collapsed.

“It needs to take into consideration the safety of the donor as well as the recipient,” she said at a briefing in Geneva. “Great care must be taken to ensure blood from the transfusions is devoid of infectious agents for Ebola as well as HIV, hepatitis and other dangerous pathogens.”

Capacity to take and test and use the blood of survivors was being set up in all three countries, but would be fastest in Liberia, she said, where she hoped it would be established “in the coming weeks”.

Experimental vaccines will be introduced in January, she said, although in the context of large-scale clinical trials. “I’m not saying there will be mass population immunisation starting in January 2015. This is not the case,” she said. “We’re talking about tens of thousands of doses, not millions, in January.”

Those trials will be in people at high risk, probably including “healthcare workers but also burial teams or family members or contacts of known Ebola cases. There has been no decision yet taken. It is quite likely the intervention will take place in each of the three countries, so there may be a different approach in each country.”

There are three leading candidate vaccines. One from GlaxoSmithKline and a similar vaccine from Johnson and Johnson are already in human safety trials, which are important not just to establish that there are no serious side-effects but also to work out the optimal dose.

GSK is already manufacturing 10,000 doses of its vaccine, which is unprecedented ahead of safety data – as is the sharing of data which is now taking place between commercial rivals. A third vaccine, from Canada, is moving into human trials and 800 vials have been shipped to Geneva for use in Africa as soon as there is data on its safety and immunogenicity – the antibody response it evokes, which is an indicator that it could be effective against the virus.

“There haven’t been any delays. We couldn’t go any faster without really doing things dangerously,” said Dr Charles Link, CEO and chief scientific officer of NewLink Genetics, of Ames, Iowa, which has the manufacturing licence from the Canadian government, speaking in the Canadian Press.

“I don’t think humanity has ever tried to do something this complex, to be quite honest,” said Link.

The 10,000 doses of GSK’s vaccine will not be enough to immunise all frontline health workers and burial teams - that would require somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 doses, but it is likely that the companies will try to ramp up production if the safety and immunogenicity data from trials outside of west Africa look good.

Experts will be hoping that the antibody response in people who have been vaccinated is high enough. If not, boosters could be required, which will be highly problematic in the three countries. It would be a huge logistical challenge to recall people for a second injection in a state where much of the infrastructure has broken down and health records and names and addresses of patients were not routinely recorded even before Ebola hit.

Meanwhile, a senior Red Cross official has said he is confident the epidemic could be contained within four to six months by the methods that have closed down Ebola outbreaks in the past.

Elhadj As Sy, the secretary-general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told reporters in Beijing on Wednesday that the outbreak could be contained if there was “good isolation, good treatment of the cases which are confirmed, good dignified and safe burials of deceased people”.

Jurors in the long-running trial of Blackwater security guards charged with killing civilians during the Iraq war have indicated they may be close to reaching a partial verdict, according to new notes exchanged with the judge.

The notorious massacre in 2007 left 17 people dead and 20 seriously injured after guards working for the US State Department fired heavy machine guns and grenade launchers from their armoured convoy in the mistaken belief it was under attack by insurgents.

For 26 days, as of Tuesday, the jury in Washington has been deliberating over 33 separate counts ranging from a charge of first degree murder in the case of one guard through to several charges of voluntary and attempted manslaughter in the case of three others.

But on Tuesday afternoon, their mammoth deliberations appeared to be drawing to a conclusion after the foreman wrote a note to the judge, Royce Lamberth, asking whether they could return a partial verdict on the charges where they had reached a unanimous decision and what would happen if they were in deadlock on others.

They also asked in two consecutive notes on Monday and Tuesday detailed questions about separate weapons charges that seem to indicate they are leaning towards sticking with voluntary manslaughter charges, rather than reducing them to involuntary manslaughter as had previously been suspected.

A large sentencing disparity between the two crimes – ranging from 15 plus years for voluntary to less than half that for involuntary – is compounded by the fact that the jury was instructed that a separate charge of using a firearm in relation to a crime of violence could not be considered unless they were sure the manslaughter was voluntary.

An earlier exchange of notes on the subject had alarmed prosecutors because it implied the defendants could be convicted on the lesser charge but serve just a few years in a prison without any supplemental weapons charges.

On Tuesday, the prosecution team was in high spirits during a brief hearing to discuss the judge’s latest instructions, as it relished questions from the jury that were predicated on the assumption it would convict at least one guard for voluntary manslaughter.

“We have read (over and over) the jury instructions and need further clarification of what exactly is a ‘destructive device’,” wrote the foreman, referring to detailed distinctions made in the weapons charge between machine guns, sniper rifles and grenade launchers allegedly used by the Blackwater convoy.

After consulting with lawyers from both sides, the judge instructed them that the government was only suggesting the grenade launchers may count as destructive devices, but need only prove that any weapon was used to make the charge stick.

“If we come to a deadlock what do we do?” the jury added in the second of two notes on Tuesday. “If we are unanimous on counts, what do we do, can we present them now?”

Attempts to prosecute the guards have previously foundered due to a series of legal mistakes by US officials and the case had attracted widespread attention in Iraq as a symbol of apparent American immunity.

During the trial’s emotional closing arguments, jurors were told of the “shocking amount of death, injury and destruction” that saw “innocent men, women and children mowed down” as they went about their daily lives in downtown Baghdad.

The federal prosecutor Anthony Asuncion said: “These men took something that did not belong to them; the lives of 14 human beings … they were turned into bloody, bullet-riddled corpses at the hands of these men.”

“It must have seemed like the apocalypse was here,” said Asuncion in his closing argument, as he described how many were shot in the back, at long range, or blown up by powerful grenades used by the US contractors.

Frank Timiș, the founder of Sierra Leone’s biggest iron ore producer, African Minerals, has agreed to buy the Marampa mine in the Ebola-stricken country from London Mining, which went into administration last week.

London Mining has been at the centre of coordinating efforts to fight the spread of the virus in Sierra Leone, and its collapse raised fears about international efforts to combat the epidemic.

Timiș has agreed to a $20m (£12.5m) funding deal with Australia’s Cape Lambert Resources to help him acquire Marampa. He is seeking to secure the deal through his private Timis Mining business instead of African Minerals, which is listed in London and has been affected by the Ebola outbreak.

A spokeswoman for Timiș confirmed details of financing for the deal, released by Cape Lambert Resources to the Australian stock exchange. Cape Lambert will lend Timiș $8m for a year and pay $12m for a royalty of $2 for each tonne of iron ore extracted from Marampa for four years if the deal is completed.

African Minerals and London Mining have both been hit by a 40% drop in the price of iron ore and disruption caused by the Ebola epidemic.

The number of deaths from Ebola has increased to 20 a day in western Sierra Leone. The disease has been edging closer to the Marampa mine while previously it was mainly in the east of the country.

London Mining is building a 130-bed Ebola treatment centre near Lunsar, 60 miles east of Freetown, and has donated the equivalent of £103,000 to the Sierra Leonean effort to stop the spread of the disease.

The heavily indebted company, which has been pushed to the brink by collapsing iron prices combined with the difficulty of working through the Ebola crisis, is one of Sierra Leone’s biggest employers and contributes about 10% of the state’s GDP.

London Mining entered administration last week after it ran out of funds and failed to find a buyer. It said it would work with PwC, its administrator, to ensure that a buyer was found for Marampa.

Marampa employs about 1,300 people and has enough iron ore reserves for 40 years of mining. The site is about 74 miles from African Minerals’ Tonkolili mine.

Analysts at Investec said: “There is no guarantee that TMC [Timis Mining] will get Marampa, but it certainly means that there will be another offer on the table for the administrator. While we believe that African Minerals is the natural acquirer of [London Mining’s] assets, given its significant infrastructure in the region and the transport cost savings it can thereby realise for the Marampa operation, it is interesting that it is Timiș’ private company purportedly doing the bidding, perhaps because it can more readily realise the funding to make the offer.”

Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda has termed “unfair” the decision by 12 key donor countries to suspend $558 million (Sh937 billion) aid in General Budget Support (GBS) for the 2014/15 financial year.

Speaking in London, Mr Pinda said the donors jumped the gun over the reported Sh201 billion Independent Power Tanzania Limited (IPTL) escrow monies scandal. “The donors were unfair to Tanzania in their action. They should have waited for the relevant state agencies to release a report on the investigations,” Mr Pinda said in an interview with the BBC Swahili television on Tuesday.

“I am asking myself why they were so quick to make such a decision when the matter was still under investigation,’’ he wondered.

Mr Pinda used the same live BBC interview to officially confirm that he would be gunning for the CCM ticket to succeed President Jakaya Kikwete in next year’s General Election. He joins a growing list of ruling party cadres wanting to become president.

The Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB) and the Controller and Auditor General (PCCB) separately conducted investigations into the payment of the escrow funds to Pan Africa Power Solutions Tanzania Limited (PAP) in a scandalous IPTL take over. The findings of the investigations are yet to be made public, but may be tabled in Parliament in early November.

The Premier’s protest was the first time that a top official in the executive was making a direct comment following a move by Finland, Sweden, Denmark, the European Commission, Ireland, Germany, Britain, Norway, Canada, Japan, the World Bank as well as the African Development Bank to withhold budget funding.

Government execution of certain projects has taken an early hit with Ms Kati Manner, the head of cooperation at the Finnish Embassy (GBS chair), confirming only $69 million (Sh110 billion) of the total pledges has been released to the Treasury.

But Mr Pinda remained optimistic, giving an assurance that there should be no cause for alarm. He said, however, it was unfortunate the donors’ action had adverse impacts on the country’s development.

The donors have made it clear that they would be in a position to take a different action only when the government makes public the findings of the CAG investigation.

The government has already reached out to IMF to find a solution on how it could help fix the budget gap, with commercial borrowing and more austerity measures being considered upfront to forestall a budget crisis as huge public expenditure programmes tax the State. Among them are plans for a referendum on the proposed new constitution, bio-metric voter registration kits (BVRs) and preparations for the local government elections slated for December. Others are the ongoing issuance of the national identity cards (IDs), preparations for the 2015 General Election and the rollout of projects in the health, infrastructure, energy and education sectors. A huge chunk of the donor money is usually directed to the social sectors.

On his presidential ambition, Mr Pinda said while he has made the decision to run, he was yet to make it official. “We have many people who have declared their intention to vie for the country’s top job, and I find it good in terms of politics. The most important task lies with Tanzanians who will finally make rational and informed decisions to decide who fits this position better,’’ he said.

Britain has been told it must pay an extra €2.1bn (£1.7bn) into the European Union budget by the end of next month because the UK economy is doing better relative to other European economies.
The demand is certain to be used against David Cameron by the growing camp who want the UK to quit the EU.

British and European commission officials confirmed that the Treasury had been told last week that budget contribution calculations based on gross national income (GNI) adjustments carried out by Eurostat, the EU statistics agency, had exposed a huge discrepancy between what Britain had been asked to contribute and what it should be paying, because of the UK’s recovery.

The bombshell, first reported by the Financial Times, was dropped into the middle of an EU summit in Brussels where Cameron and 27 other leaders were mired in tough negotiations over climate-change policy and attempts to agree big reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

A Downing Street source said: “It’s not acceptable to just change the fees for previous years and demand them back at a moment’s notice. The European commission was not expecting this money and does not need this money and we will work with other countries similarly affected to do all we can to challenge this.”

The prime minister on Thursday evening conferred with Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, as the Netherlands has also been ordered to pay more than €600m extra into the budget, while other countries such as Germany and France are likely to have excess contributions returned.

The commission told the various countries of the revamped figures on 17 October, EU officials said. They said the British had until 1 December to provide €2.1bn, roughly a fifth of the UK’s annual net contribution to the EU.

The demand for the money is political dynamite for a prime minister wrestling with dilemmas over Britain’s future in Europe and broadly seen to be making increasingly Eurosceptic gestures to the restless backbenchers who want to deal with Nigel Farage’s Europe rejectionists.

“The timing is far from ideal,” said Patrizio Fiorilli, spokesman for the EU budget commissioner. “But there are rules we have to follow.”

“It’s crazy,” said Richard Corbett, a Labour MEP and former senior EU official. “This must be an automatic thing because politically the timing could not be worse.”

Farage, leader of Ukip, led the condemnation of the European commission plan. “Having come to Britain to set fire to David Cameron’s migration ideas, José Manuel Barroso [European commission president] has returned to Brussels to pour more fuel on the flames,” he told the Guardian.

“This is the EU making clear that economic success is not to be applauded but to be punished. Mr Cameron has to veto this if he is to have any credibility at all.”

Leading Tories also condemned the commission. MP Tracey Crouch, who is playing a key role in the campaign for the upcoming Rochester and Strood byelection, said: “You should not punish countries that are working hard to recover from the great recession. The EU should look at George Osborne’s long-term economic plan and learn some lessons from it.”

Nick de Bois, a senior member of the Tory 1922 backbenchers’ committee, said: “Only the EU would demand more money when everyone is belt-tightening. Only the EU would want to penalise growing economies to subsidise those that have not made the tough decisions. There is only one answer to such a ludicrous demand – no.”

Mark Pritchard, former secretary of the 1922 committee, said: “Penalising the UK for its economic success goes to the very heart of what is wrong with Europe. It is Europe’s waste and inefficiencies that should be targeted by Brussels – not UK taxpayers. We pay enough already. Not a single euro more should be paid.”

The request for the money comes as Cameron and his party, under pressure from Ukip to bolster their anti-EU credentials, are embroiled in fights with Brussels and other EU capitals over freedom of movement and immigration within the EU, and over Cameron’s insistence on rewriting the terms of Britain’s EU membership before putting a new deal to an in-out referendum by 2017 if he wins a second term next year.

Cameron has set great store on campaigning to reduce the overall EU budget, arguing that at a time of austerity and spending cuts all across Europe, the Brussels pot could not remain immune.

Eurostat arrived at the €2.1bn figure on the basis of new methods of calculating member states’ GNI since 1995, taking account of previously unreported or under-reported black economy elements, such as drug dealing and consumption or the sex industry.

Eurostat concluded that the UK economy has been doing much better than previously assumed since 1995, relative to other European countries, and that British contributions needed to be upped.

“It changes the way contributions to the budget are calculated,” said Fiorilli. “Some member states have booming economies. Everyone can see the UK is growing much faster than others.”

Fiorilli said that the commission and Eurostat use 1995 as the benchmark year for calculating the impact of GNI figures. “Member states including Britain insisted on this. It is their decision,” he said.

The demand comes as part of what is known in Brussels as an amending budget proposal, a routine event that occurs regularly and is dependent on the ebb and flow of payments into the EU machine. There are currently a further six amending budgets on the table in Brussels, some of which may entail returning funds to Britain, meaning the overall bill could yet be cut.

While the €2.1bn bill is theoretically due by 1 December, the amending budget also has to be endorsed by the 28 governments of the EU and by the European parliament, meaning it could run into resistance if Britain is able to marshal enough allies and given that there are many European governments reluctant to hand an easy victory to those campaigning to take the UK out of the EU.

A physician who recently returned to New York from Ebola-ravaged west Africa has tested positive for the disease, officials announced.

Craig Spencer, 33, a doctor who lives in the Harlem neighborhood of the city, was taken to hospital in New York on Thursday after displaying symptoms consistent with those caused by Ebola, including a fever of 103F (39.5C).

A preliminary test on Thursday confirmed that Spencer, who arrived back in New York from Guinea on 17 October, has the virus. Federal officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which has sent a team to New York City to assist city and state officials in the response, will carry out a further test to confirm the result.

Officials told a press conference at Bellevue hospital on Thursday that they were monitoring four people with whom Spencer had contact. His fiancee, Morgan Dixon, and two friends had been quarantined, while the fourth person, a taxi driver, was not considered to be at risk.

Spencer took several trips on the New York subway in the past week, visited the Gutter bowling alley in the Williams burg area of Brooklyn on Wednesday night and took an Uber cab, all before he began to display symptoms, officials said.

He began to feel feverish on Thursday between 10am and 11am. He contacted Doctors Without Borders, the organization with which he had been working in Africa, which in turn contacted the New York department of health. Officials organized for him to be transported to Bellevue hospital in the city, a designated site for Ebola patients, under strictly controlled conditions.

“I know the word Ebola right now can spread fear just by the sound of the word,” said New York state governor Andrew Cuomo at a press conference. “Ebola is not an airborne illness, it is contracted when a person is extremely ill and symptomatic.”

Officials urged residents of New York not to panic, and drew a comparison with the response to an outbreak in Dallas, Texas, where the city’s principal hospital bungled its initial contacts with an Ebola patient who later died, Thomas Duncan.

“I know it’s a frightening situation, I know when you watched it on the news and it was about Dallas it was frightening; that it’s here in New York is more frightening,” Cuomo said. “New York is a dense place, a lot of people are on top of each other. But the more facts you know, the less frightening the situation is.”

Spencer’s apartment in Harlem was cordoned off on Thursday night, and health officials were on the scene, giving out information to residents. His fiancée was being monitored in a separate quarantine ward at Bellevue hospital. A team of epidemiologists - referred to by mayor Bill de Blasio at the press conference as “medical detectives” - were questioning Spencer’s contacts and using information from his Metro card, which would give details of his subway travel, and credit cards.

Doctors Without Borders, known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières, said Spencer had acted in accordance with its guidelines for returning field workers.

“A person in New York City, who recently worked with Doctors Without Borders in one of the Ebola-affected countries in west Africa, notified our office this morning to report having developed a fever,” it said in a statement.

Uber confirmed that one of its drivers had transported Spencer on Wednesday evening. The CDC and the New York department of health assured the company that its driver was unlikely to catch the disease. “We have communicated this to the driver, and the [New York department of health] medical team met with the driver in person, assuring him that he is not at risk. Our thoughts are with the patient and his loved ones.”

Spencer’s public Facebook page, which has since been taken down, showed a photo of him dated 18 September wearing protective gear announcing he was heading to Guinea with Doctors Without Borders. It showed him checking into a location in Brussels on 16 October.

His LinkedIn profile identified him as a fellow of international emergency medicine at Columbia University-New York Presbyterian hospital.

New York Presbyterian hospital released a statement in which it did not identify Spencer by name but called the patient “a dedicated humanitarian on the staff of New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University medical center who went to an area of medical crisis to help a desperately undeserved population”.

It said he has not returned to work at the hospital or seen any patients since returning from west Africa, where more than more than 4,500 people have died since the current outbreak began.

Officials have attempted to reassure New Yorkers that the city and state are safe. City health officials repeated that Ebola is difficult to contract, since people must come into direct contact with body fluids of an infected and symptomatic person.

Many fears about the disease have swirled around New York’s status as a transport hub. Airports in the metropolitan area process most of the of the passengers arriving in the US from west Africa every day. John F Kennedy international airport and Newark, New Jersey’s airport are among only five in the US permitted to accept passengers from the worst-affected countries – Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Starting on Monday, passengers from these countries will be monitored for 21 days after arriving in the US.

As part of the New York governor’s Ebola preparedness plan, two ambulances are regularly stationed at JFK and Newark airports, the city’s transit authority was provided with protective gear and training, and unannounced drills are being conducted at airports, college campuses and in subways. The governor designated eight hospitals in the state to handle Ebola patients, including Bellevue.

To ease healthcare workers’ fears about the disease, New York City held an Ebola educational session on Tuesday.

Barack Obama had spoken by telephone with both Cuomo and De Blasio about the positive test, the White House said, and discussed the deployment of officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Some CDC officials were already in New York and an additional response team would be there by late Thursday night.

Labor is ramping up pressure on the government over its response to the Ebola outbreak. Tanya Plibersek has warned that the disease may spiral “out of control” if not contained within weeks.

The prime minister, Tony Abbott, admitted on Thursday in question time that Australia had been asked to contribute to the practical international response by key allies the US and Britain, and that he was giving “careful consideration” to the request.

Plibersek, Labor’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, said Australia must act now.

“The predictions are that if we don’t get Ebola under control in the next two months or so, the spread of the virus will be completely unpredictable and very difficult to handle,” she said. “We’ve had calls from around the world for Australia to send help.

“We must stop this in West Africa, and Australia must be part of an international effort. If Ebola gets to Asia there’s no guarantee of Australia’s safety.”

The health minister, Peter Dutton, issued a statement saying Australia is in “discussions with our international partners about what assistance can reasonably be provided towards the effort in West Africa”. Australia has contributed $18m to the United Nations and NGOs.

“The government has world-class domestic protocols in place to respond quickly and effectively in the event of a reported case in Australia,” Dutton wrote. “Labor must immediately stop playing politics with Ebola.”

The tit-for-tat among the two major parties comes after the Department of Health was grilled by a Senate estimates committee.

The chief medical officer, Chris Baggoley, admitted that the government had not specifically trained medical personnel to tackle Ebola, but his evidence was later refuted by the head of the department, Martin Bowles, who said a number of health workers were immediately ready to be deployed to Ebola-affected regions if called upon to do so.

The Coalition said Labor’s push to send medical personnel abroad would disregard their safety; they could not be deployed before logistical considerations such as accommodation, safety and evacuation routes were finalised.

Craig Spencer was halfway through the recommended 21-day self-monitoring period for those at risk from the Ebola virus when he went bowling in Brooklyn.

The 33-year-old physician had been working with Doctors Without Borders on the Ebola outbreak in Guinea, one of the three west African countries worst affected by the virus. He finished his work there on 12 October and left the country on 14 October, flying home to John F Kennedy airport in New York via Europe. He arrived in New York on 17 October.

In the days since returning to his apartment in Harlem, he was careful to check his temperature twice a day as part of his monitoring process.

But at some point between returning home from Guinea and experiencing symptoms, officials said, Spencer took a three-mile jog, despite being on a self-imposed limited-contact regime.

Certainly, it seems likely that he thought he was in the clear by Wednesday evening, when he decided to go with friends to Gutter, a bowling alley in Williamsburg.

He did, authorities confirmed at a press conference on Thursday, bowl.

During the day on Wednesday, he may have walked on the High Line – a wildly popular tourist attraction on the west side of Manhattan built on a former elevated railway – and may have also eaten at a restaurant near there, according to officials.

It is known for sure that he travelled on three subway lines – the 1-train, the A-train and the L-train – as well as an Uber taxi. Epidemiologists were using information gathered from Spencer’s New York Metrocard – which records the entry points to subway journeys – and his credit cards, to determine his movements around the city.

Uber confirmed that Spencer had been given a ride Wednesday evening, and told the Guardian that it had contacted the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the New York department of health, who had told it that neither the driver nor any of his subsequent passengers were at risk.

Spencer had no fever when he left his apartment on Wednesday, and continued to check his temperature. He told health authorities that began to experience fatigue on Wednesday night, but was otherwise feeling well.

A high fever on Thursday morning was the first time Spencer displayed symptoms which indicated Ebola, authorities said, and emphasised that it was unlikely he would have been infectious before that time.

It was between 10am and 11am on Thursday, when he developed both a 103-degree fever and gastro-enterital symptoms, that he contacted Doctors Without Borders, who in turn contacted the New York health authorities.

An emergency medical crew arrived in full protective gear and took him to Bellevue in an ambulance surrounded by police squad cars.

This triggered a series of responses that had been exhaustively rehearsed over the weeks that had passed since America’s first Ebola patient, Thomas Duncan, was diagnosed with the virus at a hospital in Dallas.

Spencer was brought to New York’s Bellevue Hospital, one of five hospitals in the state which have been designated to handle patients with the disease, by a team of specially-trained paramedics in full hazmat suits.

A “meticulous” individual, he was careful to make sure his apartment was locked behind him.

Spencer is currently in an isolation ward unit at Bellevue hospital that was built during the Aids epidemic in the 1990s, when it was designed to deal with immuno-compromised patients suffering from tuberculosis.

Since returning from Guinea, it is confirmed that he had been in contact with his fiancee - who is currently under supervision and in isolation also at Bellevue hospital, where she is currently showing no symptoms that would indicate Ebola.

Two other friends have been given the option of home quarantine. All three are said to currently be healthy, but will be monitored until they clear the 21-day incubation period.

At the press conference, the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, compared New York’s preparedness favourably with the response in Dallas, saying it was the “exact opposite” of what happened there.

“Dallas unfortunately was caught before they could prepare, before they what they knew what they were dealing with, and we had the advantage of learning from the Dallas experience,” he said.

Thomas Duncan, the Dallas patient, was at first sent home from Texas Health Presbyterian hospital and was later left in open waiting rooms, according to reports by the nurses’ union, which also alleged that healthcare personnel were forced to seal gaps in their protective equipment with surgical tape.

Two nurses in Dallas contracted the disease from Duncan.

Cuomo said that New York had been “fortunate … that the affected was a doctor” who “was familiar with the possibility and the symptoms, and handled himself accordingly”.

“This is New York, people fly in and out every day,” said Cuomo. “We can’t say that this is an unexpected circumstance.”

As soon as the diagnosis was suspected, a team from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was dispatched to New York to assist with Spencer’s treatment and the public health response.

Out of what officials called “an abundance of caution”, the bowling alley Spencer attended will be closed on Friday for a full inspection by health authorities.

JERUSALEM — Amid soaring tensions fueled by religious fervor and Palestinian anger over control of East Jerusalem, two drivers on Wednesday plowed their cars into Israelis in separate episodes, killing one police officer and injuring three soldiers.

The two episodes, in Jerusalem and the West Bank, have added to fears that a third intifada, or uprising, is taking shape as the latest crisis continues to reverberate beyond Israel’s borders. On Wednesday, Jordan recalled its ambassador to Israel, saying the move was for consultations and to protest “violations” at the most sensitive holy site in Jerusalem.

The Israeli police labeled at least one of the crashes a terrorist attack, in which a Palestinian affiliated with Hamas rammed a van into pedestrians in Jerusalem, killing the police officer and injuring at least a dozen other people. In the second episode, in the West Bank, a car with Palestinian plates ran over the three soldiers in what the military suspects was another deliberate attack; the driver escaped

If the suspicions are correct, the episode would be the third time in two weeks that Palestinians used vehicles as weapons to harm Israelis.

The spike in tensions is tied to two of the most emotionally charged disagreements between Israelis and Palestinians: control of East Jerusalem and access to the religious compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. Some nationalist Israelis have been pushing to be allowed to pray at the site.

Recent events have set off clashes at the sacred plateau, which is revered by Jews as the place where ancient Jewish temples once stood, and by Muslims as the site of Al Aksa Mosque and the golden Dome of the Rock. Jordan’s decision to recall its ambassador came after the Islamic authorities at the site said that Israeli security forces had entered the mosque with their boots on, considered a grave insult, and then damaged the mosque doors, burned carpets and broken glass as they confronted protesters on Wednesday morning.

Jordan also urged the United Nations Security Council to hold Israel accountable for what it called violations against the mosque. The official custodian of Al Aksa compound, Jordan has been a crucial ally and cornerstone of Israel’s security since the two signed a peace treaty two decades ago.

Israel’s foreign ministry said in a statement that Jordan’s recall of its ambassador would not help calm the atmosphere and that Israel expected Jordan to condemn the Palestinian violence.

Video filmed by the Israeli police showed masked Palestinians hurling rocks and firecrackers at the police from inside Al Aksa Mosque, in an apparent effort to prevent Jewish visitors from entering the compound after some Israelis had called for prayers there on Wednesday.

The police could be seen just inside the mosque, removing furniture that the protesters had used as barricades in order to close the door. A police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, said that the police had used stun grenades but denied that they had gone deeply into the mosque.
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Jordan was already incensed that Israel had closed the site to all worshipers one day last week for the first time in years. Israel said it had taken the step to prevent more violence after an Israeli counterterrorism unit killed a Palestinian suspected in an assassination attempt against a prominent American-born Israeli activist, Yehuda Glick, a leader of the movement challenging the ban on Jewish prayer inside the compound. (Israel, which is in charge of security there, has banned non-Muslim prayer for years to avoid provocations.)

Supporters of Mr. Glick, who was severely wounded in the assassination attempt, had called for Jews to pray for his recovery at the holy site on Wednesday.

Mohammad al-Momani, the Jordanian government spokesman, said Israel must maintain the status quo and not allow “extremists” into the compound to “practice religious practices that are provocative to Muslims.” Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, said Israel was “inciting a holy war in Palestine and throughout the region, with global ramifications.”

The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations said the Palestinian Authority had written to the Security Council to request that it take action on the tensions at the mosque.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who says it is the Palestinian leadership that is inciting the violence, has repeatedly said he will not allow any change to the status quo at the site — neither allowing Jews to pray there nor preventing them from visiting.

Israel seized the compound from Jordan in the 1967 war along with the rest of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israel then annexed East Jerusalem in a move that was never internationally recognized. Tensions over East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians claim as the capital of a future independent state, rose again last week when Mr. Netanyahu announced that Israel would fast-track planning for 1,060 new apartments in populous Jewish neighborhoods there.

In the vehicle attack Wednesday in Jerusalem, the driver, identified as a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem, was shot dead by border police officers after he got out of his van and tried to attack officers and bystanders with an iron bar. The border policeman killed was identified as Jidaan Asad, 38, from a Druse village in northern Israel.

Secretary of State John Kerry condemned the assault, calling it an “atrocity.” He added, “The confrontation at the Al Aksa Mosque is also of particular concern where reports of damage are deeply disturbing.”

The latest attack was strikingly similar to one on Oct. 22, when another Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem swerved off the same main road into a light-rail station, killing a 3-month-old American-Israeli baby and a young woman from Ecuador.

Israeli security officials identified the driver in Wednesday’s attack as Ibrahim Akari, a married father of five and a low-level Hamas activist. Ynet, an Israeli news site, quoted Mr. Akari’s wife as saying he had been upset by reports of what was happening at the mosque before he left the house Wednesday morning.

Mr. Akari’s brother, Musa Akari, was convicted of involvement in the capture and killing of an Israeli border policeman in the 1990s, the security officials said.

Leaders of Hamas, the Islamic militant group that dominates Gaza, praised the latest attack without directly taking responsibility for it. “We believe it is a natural reaction to Israel’s crimes,” said Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, in a phone interview.

Israel has accused the more moderate Palestinian leadership in the West Bank of inciting violence. Israeli leaders condemned President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority for sending a letter of condolence to the family of Mu’atez Hijazi, the man suspected of attacking Mr. Glick. The letter described Mr. Hijazi as a “martyr who defended the rights of our Palestinian people.”

The police said Mr. Hijazi was shot after he opened fire on the forces who came to arrest him.

Citing the condolence letter, Mr. Netanyahu said that Wednesday’s attack was “a direct result of the incitement of Abu Mazen and his partners in Hamas,” referring to Mr. Abbas by his nickname and to the unity government he recently formed with the backing of Hamas.

Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian political columnist, said in an interview that Jordan’s decision to recall its ambassador was meant “to send a clear message not only to the Israeli government but to the Israeli public and right-wing extremist groups that for the Jordanian government and the king himself, Al Aksa is the red line.”

Efraim Halevy, a former chief of the Mossad, who, as the deputy chief, was a secret envoy of Israeli leaders to the father of the current Jordanian king, said “the pressure in Jordan concerning Al Aksa must be rising.”

“Everything is symbolic in this part of the world,” he said, “and this is a very sensitive moment in the history of the Middle East.”

Mississippi’s longtime corrections commissioner resigned Wednesday amid a federal investigation into the state’s prison system, which has been plagued by squalid conditions and violence by guards and inmates.

The commissioner, Christopher Epps, who had led the Mississippi Department of Corrections since 2002, submitted a letter of resignation to Gov. Phil Bryant on Wednesday, Knox Graham, a spokesman for the governor, said.

Mr. Graham said he could not discuss why Mr. Epps had stepped down, but he said the governor had begun a search for an interim commissioner.

Mr. Epps, 53, could not be reached for comment.

The Justice Department is investigating treatment of prisoners and conditions at jails, said a person with knowledge of the investigation who was not authorized to speak publicly. Advocates for prisoners say that stabbings, rapes, beatings and extortion are common in a number of the state’s jails.

Mr. Epps started his career in 1982 as a corrections officer at a penitentiary in Parchman, Miss. He was the longest-serving state corrections commissioner in Mississippi history and was among the most veteran in the nation.

Despite the problems in the prison system, Mr. Epps was influential among colleagues, serving as president of both the Association of State Correctional Administrators and the American Correctional Association before his resignation.

In a letter last month in The Clarion-Ledger, a Mississippi newspaper that published a series of articles about conditions in state prisons, Mr. Epps played down the level of violence in jails and said the state’s recidivism rates were among the lowest in the nation. He also said the average cost of housing a prisoner — $42.14 a day — was among the nation’s lowest.

During his tenure, Mr. Epps was praised for his efforts to eliminate the system’s reliance on solitary confinement to punish prisoners, especially those with mental illnesses, but critics said he did too little to stop violence.

Prisoner advocates and civil rights groups said that the worst conditions existed in prisons run by private companies — over which Mr. Epps had ultimate responsibility — but that the problems extended to prisons managed directly by the state Corrections Department as well.

Jody E. Owens, a managing attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said conditions in the state prison system were substandard and often dangerous.

“The buck stops with Commissioner Epps,” he said.

A federal lawsuit filed in 2013 by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union charged that at one state prison, the East Mississippi Correctional Facility, mentally ill prisoners were “locked down in filthy cells for days, weeks or even years.”

“Setting fires is often the only way to get medical attention in emergencies,” said the lawsuit, which is pending in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi.

The prison, which houses about 1,400 inmates, is managed through a contract with the state by the Utah-based Management Training Corporation.

In 2012, a federal judge approved an agreement between the Justice Department and the state to implement an overhaul at another state jail, the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility, where it was discovered that staff members had coerced inmates to have sex in exchange for food.

Republicans working on the Senate race in Colorado sensed something was shifting even before the votes were counted.

Voters in suburban Denver — who had backed President Obama twice — were abandoning Senator Mark Udall, a Democrat, in the final days before the election.

“We thought the evening could be decided early,” said Cory Gardner, the Republican who defeated Mr. Udall.

More striking than any Republican gains in red-state America on Tuesday were the party’s Senate victories in Colorado and North Carolina and the near miss in Virginia.

All are states that both parties believed were trending Democratic, and that Democrats boasted would before long be out of reach to Republicans.

But a powerful lesson for both parties emerged from the returns: Demographic shifts that are gradually reshaping the American electorate, making it more racially diverse and younger, cannot overcome a difficult political environment and a weak message in a nonpresidential year.

And the Democratic edge in sophisticated technological voter mobilization and targeting is eroding, as Republicans adopt similar techniques and catch up.

“Democrats have sold this myth about their magic on the ground,” said Brad Todd, a strategist for Mr. Gardner. “But they threw the best they had at us, and it wasn’t enough.”

Tuesday’s results are causing leaders of both parties, and those with their eye on the White House, to re-examine their assumptions about the electoral map.

While Republicans celebrated their showing in fast-growing swing states like Colorado, Democrats were deflated that their candidates did not perform better in Georgia and Texas, where they believed that demographic shifts, especially the growing ranks of Hispanic voters, were making the terrain more competitive.

Jason Carter and Michelle Nunn — the highly touted Georgia Democrats with famous last names who ran for governor and the Senate — both lost by eight percentage points, far worse than had been expected. The results were even more grim for Democrats in Texas, where the party poured tens of millions of dollars into an effort to make Wendy Davis’s bid for governor competitive and lay the groundwork for future advancement.

Ms. Davis was trounced by more than 20 percentage points and, notably, struggled to build up a big margin among Hispanics. Greg Abbott, her Republican opponent, aggressively pursued Latinos and highlighted his Hispanic mother-in-law during the campaign. He attracted 43 percent of Hispanic voters, according to exit polls.

The Democratic coalition also depends heavily on women, but in many races, the party’s traditional advantage among female voters shrank or disappeared. Democrats were already debating on Wednesday whether the party’s message — which in some states, like Colorado, focused on reproductive rights — was adequate to motivate voters.

“Democrats spent an entire election cycle saying nothing to independents and left the center open to us,” Mr. Todd said.

Another question that Democratic strategists are grappling with in the aftermath of Tuesday’s vote is whether the so-called Obama voters — younger people, minorities and women — can be mobilized when the president is not at the top of the ticket. Many Democratic Senate candidates distanced themselves from the president, and it is unclear whether that discouraged his most ardent supporters.

Voters who turned out Tuesday were older, whiter and more conservative than those who participated in 2012. Sixty-five percent of those who voted were over age 45, compared with 54 percent in 2012. Seventy-five percent of the electorate was white; two years ago it was 72 percent.

One issue for Hillary Rodham Clinton, should she run for president, is whether continuing demographic changes making the country more diverse will be sufficient to ensure an electorate favorable to Democrats in 2016 and offset any decline in the excitement among minority voters inspired by Mr. Obama.

“We shouldn’t just assume that the Obama voters will automatically come out for Democratic presidential candidates,” cautioned David Plouffe, Mr. Obama’s former campaign manager.

Longtime advisers to the Clintons were also digesting the implications of double-digit Democratic losses in places like Kentucky and Arkansas, where former President Bill Clinton’s base of white working-class voters has drifted from the party. Talk that Mrs. Clinton could compete in heavily white Southern states now seems likely to dissipate.

“For those voters who remain devoted to Bill Clinton, he’s not in office anymore, and they don’t like the dysfunction that’s up here,” said Paul Neaville, a Democratic strategist and Arkansas native who works in Washington.

If Tuesday was a sobering moment for Democrats, the results are likely to embolden a number of Republicans. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who headed the Republican Governors Association effort, may well interpret the success of his party’s candidates for governor in swing and liberal-leaning states as a positive sign about the appeal of blue-state executives.

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, having convincingly won a third race for the office in four years, could take his success in a Democratic-leaning Midwestern state as a positive cue. Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida would surely be pleased with how his party fared in places, like Colorado, that have rising Hispanic populations. And conservative hard-liners like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas could easily see the repudiation of Mr. Obama and repeated attacks during the campaign on the president’s health care law as a vindication of sorts.

“The field grew last night,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said in a telephone interview. “Everybody on our side will see what they want to see. And everybody will see some validation of who they are politically.”

But Mr. Graham, along with many center-right Republicans on Wednesday, suggested that the party should not take the success this year as a sign that they are bound to be competitive again in the most crucial states. Their problem is the opposite of Democrats’: When a diverse electorate shows up, Republicans struggle to win.

“There were a lot of people who didn’t vote last night and will in 2016,” Mr. Graham said. “Not to borrow from John Edwards, but there are two Americas — two American electorates. So I don’t think we should have a false sense of confidence from last night.”

One of Mr. Graham’s colleagues is already considering that larger presidential electorate. Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, thinks his party needs to develop a broader and more inclusive appeal and compete in areas it now effectively cedes to Democrats.

He said in an interview that he would not decide on his own bid until next spring, but that in the meantime he planned to push measures that would help expand his and his party’s reach. He said he would lobby Republican leaders and Democrats to take up criminal justice reform and individual immigration measures when Congress reconvenes in January.

“When you look at presidential politics, when we’ve tried to go safe, we’ve been sorry,” Mr. Paul said, referring to both the party’s choice of candidates and where those hopefuls have campaigned. “We need to break out of the demographic stranglehold we’re in at this point.”

WASHINGTON — A Kuwaiti man held by the United States without trial for nearly 13 years in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was released early Wednesday, the military said. His repatriation was the first transfer to result from a new system of parole-board-like hearings to periodically review whether it is still necessary to keep holding prisoners.

The Kuwaiti, Fawzi al Odah, was also only the second low-level prisoner to be released from Guantánamo this year. Last year, President Obama pledged to revive his efforts to close the prison. Administration officials said an end-of-the-year flurry might be coming: The Pentagon has notified Congress that nine other detainees, including six bound for Uruguay, may soon be transferred.

Still, there are signs that disagreements remain within the administration over how much risk to accept as it tries to winnow down the population of low-level inmates and close the prison. The administration had been poised to repatriate four Afghans who have long been approved for transfer, but Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel recently pulled back from that plan, according to officials.

The officials, who discussed deliberations on the condition of anonymity, said the administration decided at a “principals’ committee” meeting on Oct. 3 in the White House Situation Room to proceed with notifying Congress that it intended to repatriate the four Afghans. Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, chaired the meeting.

The notice was supposed to be given within a week after the State Department obtained an unspecified security assurance from the Afghan government. That was completed three weeks ago, the officials said, but Mr. Hagel has not sent the notice.

Although the Pentagon signed off on the Afghans’ repatriation as part of a 2009 interagency task force, officials familiar with the deliberations said Mr. Hagel had decided to reassess the timing after Gen. John F. Campbell, the top military leader in Afghanistan, sent a memo expressing concerns that they might attack American or Afghan troops.

The officials also said Mr. Hagel was still considering the proposed Afghan transfers. His spokesman, Rear Admiral John Kirby, declined to specifically comment about the Afghans. But he described the department’s deliberations about whether the security risk has been mitigated as including “inputs from commanders in the field, whose perspectives are not only greatly valued by the secretary but heavily relied upon.”

It is unusual for a cabinet secretary to independently reconsider a decision reached at a principals’ committee meeting. But Guantánamo transfers are an unusual type of policy decision because of a law requiring that the secretary of defense notify lawmakers at least 30 days before any transfer that he has personally determined that it would be in the national interest.

In an agreement with the Kuwaiti government, Mr. Odah, whose name is sometimes spelled Fouzi al Awda, will live in custody there as part of a yearlong rehabilitation program, officials said.

He was the first detainee of any type to be transferred since May, when the Obama administration sent five high-level Taliban prisoners — who were not recommended for release — to Qatar in a prisoner swap for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the only American prisoner of war from the Afghan war. Angering lawmakers, Mr. Hagel did not provide 30 days’ notice to Congress for that swap; the administration said any delay could have endangered Sergeant Bergdahl’s life.

Mr. Hagel’s apparent decision to pull back from swiftly repatriating the Afghans came amid turbulence prompted by an inaccurate Fox News report about former Guantánamo detainees fighting in Syria.

Specifically, Fox News reported last Thursday that “as many as 20 to 30 former Guantánamo Bay detainees released within the last two to three years are suspected by intelligence and Defense officials of having joined forces with the Islamic State and other militant groups inside Syria.”

In fact, since January 2011, a total of 22 detainees had left the prison, of whom no more than two — perhaps none — are suspected or confirmed of “re-engagement” worldwide, according to semiannual reports issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. An official said there had been no Syria-related change to its numbers since the most recent report.

Fox News later altered its report, without noting that it was changed, so that it instead reads “some of whom were released within the last three years.” But its original version had already set off anger in Congress.

Representative Howard P. McKeon, the California Republican who is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and Senator Kelly Ayotte, Republican of New Hampshire, released letters to the administration last Thursday calling for a moratorium on transfers, citing “public reports” and “a public report today” about former Guantánamo detainees joining the Islamic State.

“The U.S. government must not release terrorist detainees at the same time we have committed U.S. service members to fight ISIL,” Mr. McKeon wrote, using an alternate acronym for the Islamic State. “To continue to do so just as we have had to open a new front in the war on terror is unthinkable.”

The Islamic State has used Guantánamo for propaganda purposes, forcing captured journalists to wear orange prison garb, similar to that of detainees, as it beheaded them. Patrick Ventrell, a National Security Council spokesman, said keeping the prison open was itself a risk.

“Guantánamo poses profound risks to our national security and should be closed,” Mr. Ventrell said. “The American people should not be spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on a facility that harms our standing in the world, damages our relationships with key allies and emboldens violent extremists.”

Since 2009, the executive branch has used a more stringent process of individualized review before releasing detainees. About 19 percent of former detainees released during the Bush administration have been deemed confirmed recidivists, compared with 6.8 percent of those released under the Obama administration.

Mr. Odah, the Kuwaiti released on Wednesday, was a plaintiff in a case that helped establish that courts have jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus lawsuits filed by Guantánamo detainees. But in 2009, a judge upheld Mr. Odah’s wartime detention.

In July, the Periodic Review Board, which began operating last fall, determined that his detention was no longer necessary, citing his “low level of training and lack of a leadership position in Al Qaeda” as well as his family support and Kuwaiti security measures.

“The board found the detainee’s statements to be credible regarding his commitment not to support extremist groups or other groups that promote violence, and noted the positive changes in the detainee’s behavior while in detention,” it said.

His departure leaves 148 prisoners, of whom 79 are recommended for transfer

WASHINGTON — President Obama said on Wednesday that he would seek specific authorization from Congress for the military campaign against the Islamic State, opening the door to a lengthy, potentially contentious debate over the nature and extent of American engagement in Iraq and Syria.

Mr. Obama’s announcement, at his post-election news conference, was not wholly unexpected. But it represented a significant shift from his earlier position that while he would welcome congressional backing, he had legal authority to take military action under existing statutes.

Administration officials said Mr. Obama still believed he had that authority, but with the elections over, he concluded that the time was right to petition Congress for more explicit authority.

“The world needs to know we are united behind this effort and that the men and women of our military deserve our clear and unified support,” Mr. Obama said, adding that he would begin a dialogue with congressional leaders when they come to the White House on Friday.

He also increased the pressure on Iran’s leaders ahead of a deadline this month to reach a nuclear deal, saying that the United States has now “presented to them a framework that would allow them to meet their peaceful energy needs,” without leaving Iran the ability to “break out and produce a nuclear weapon.”

The president suggested that he was now waiting for a political decision in Tehran about whether Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would accept that framework.

While Mr. Obama gave no specifics, he appeared to be referring to a plan under which Iran would ship much of its uranium stockpile to Russia, where it would be converted into fuel for the country’s single nuclear plant.

Iranian officials dismissed the report without fully denying it, but American officials have said they suspect a struggle is underway within the Iranian government on the wisdom of reaching an accord. “They have their own politics, and there’s a long tradition of mistrust between the two countries,” Mr. Obama said.

The president was guarded about the progress of the military operation against the Islamic State. He said it was too soon to say whether the United States and its allies were winning, noting that it would take a long time to upgrade Iraqi forces to the point where they could reclaim territory now held by the militants. He was even more circumspect about Syria.

“Our focus in Syria is not to solve the entire Syria situation, but rather to isolate the areas in which ISIL can operate,” he added, using an alternative name for the Islamic State.

That statement appeared somewhat at odds with a recent memo sent to the White House by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, in which he criticized the administration’s Syria policy for failing to connect the campaign against the Islamic State to the broader struggle against President Bashar al-Assad.

Mr. Hagel wrote that unless the United States clarified its intentions against the Assad regime, it would fail to enlist allies like Turkey and France for the battle against the Islamic State in Syria, since those countries are intent on ousting Mr. Assad. Other officials said that in internal debates, Mr. Hagel has not advocated taking a strong line against Mr. Assad, and in fact has echoed the Pentagon’s resistance to going to war with the Syrian government.

That will be one of the issues likely to come up in a congressional debate over authorization. Before the election, Congress passed limited authorization to pay for the training and equipping of Syrian rebels. Now the White House is seeking an authorization to use military force that would be tailored to a prolonged fight against ISIS.

Until now, the White House had justified its airstrikes in Iraq and Syria under two existing laws: a 2001 authorization passed after the 9/11 attacks, which Mr. Obama has invoked to carry out drone and missile strikes against suspected terrorists in Yemen and Somalia, and a 2002 authorization sought by President George W. Bush for the Iraq war.

“The idea is to right-size and update whatever authorization Congress provides to suit the current fight rather than previous fights,” Mr. Obama said. “We now have a different type of enemy.”

Lawmakers welcomed the announcement, even as they noted it would set off complicated political crosscurrents in both parties. Many lawmakers were privately relieved that the White House did not petition Congress before the midterm elections.

“This is an extended military campaign and it has nothing to do with the 9/11 authorization,” said Representative Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont. “It is expensive, long term, and it’s not clear where it’s going. You’re going to see a complicated debate in Congress.”

Among the issues he predicted would come up would be the deployment of American ground forces, which Mr. Obama has ruled out but which Mr. Welch said would almost certainly be needed to root out the militants.

Still, he added: “In some ways, it will probably be a better debate. People will have more latitude to consider it on the merits than they would have before the election.”

In part because the battle with the Islamic State is likely to last beyond Mr. Obama’s presidency — and soak up resources he wanted to commit elsewhere — there is an increasing sense that the White House is more eager than ever to strike even an agreement in principle with Iran by the Nov. 24 deadline for the end of negotiations.

Mr. Obama seemed intent on answering critics who have said he wants a deal too much. “Whether we can actually get a deal done, we’re going to have to find out over the next three to four weeks,” he said, suggesting that the “framework” given to Iran was essentially an effort to determine the sincerity of the country’s insistence that it was simply looking for a reliable way to produce fuel for nuclear reactors.