Prince Harry Gives Top Honour To Tutu

The archbishop, who has recently suffered ill health, looked frail but was smiling as the prince visited the offices of the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation in Cape Town.

The prince tried to usher the archbishop into a chair but he waved him away, announcing "I can stand for a long time!" before eventually taking a seat next to the prince.

The archbishop praised the prince for his charity work in Africa.

He said: "I am very touched by your commitment to Lesotho. I taught at the university there and became Bishop of Lesotho.

"It has always had a very soft spot in our hearts ... just wonderful that you and the English are helping, thank you very much."

The prince replied: "You will have to come and visit one of our projects."

The 84-year-old also talked about the Queen's continued support for the Commonwealth.

The prince, on behalf of his grandmother, then presented the archbishop with the Order of the Companions of Honour, a medal given to people for outstanding achievements in arts, culture and religion.

Previous recipients include Sir John Major, Lucian Freud, Sir David Attenborough and Harold Pinter, but several honours are reserved each year for recipients from Commonwealth countries.

Archbishop Tutu, who became known around the world for speaking out against apartheid and was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1984, has been in and out of hospital in recent months suffering from infections related to prostate cancer.

Later, Prince Harry will visit a youth centre helping young people to get out of gangs and stay away from crime.

He will attend a seminar focusing on why teenagers are lured into the gang culture before touring the centre's facilities, which include a small farm, and training workshops.

Prince Harry has already looked at the issue of gangs in the UK by launching the Full Effect programme in Nottingham, which aims to divert young people away from gangs.

His four-day tour is at the request of the UK Government.

Last Thursday, he opened the new Mamohato Children's Centre in Lesotho, run by his Sentebale charity to help children living in extreme poverty.

Flooding And Ice Storms Kill 14 Over Thanksgiving

Eight people were killed in flooding in north Texas and another six in Kansas and Oklahoma as a result of accidents during ice storms.

The Oklahoma Department of Transportation said roads in the Panhandle remained treacherous after a slow-moving storm dropped ice and freezing rain into Sunday.

More than 71,000 homes and business were without power as a result of the storms.

Forecasters predicted above-freezing temperatures in Texas and Oklahoma, but the weather conditions were expected to affect travelling conditions for people going home after Thanksgiving weekend.

Flood watches and warnings remained in effect on Sunday night in parts of north Texas and Arkansas.

A 70-year-old woman whose car was swept away in Fort Worth on Friday is still missing.

Authorities were aiming to send divers to search for her, but the rushing water made recovery efforts too dangerous, Fort Worth Fire Department spokesman Kyle Clay said.

A family had to be rescued from their home in Seagoville, southeast of Dallas, because of rising water levels.

In Texas, concerns have been raised over the Trinity and Brazos rivers with more rain possible for Monday.

Most airports in the US enjoyed smoother weather conditions as tens of millions of Americans head home from the long holiday weekend.

Airlines For America estimated that more than 25 million passengers would take flights on US airlines during the 12 days around Thanksgiving.

Motoring group AAA estimated that another 47 million Americans would travel at least 50 miles over the weekend - the highest number since 2007.

Shadow Cabinet Stands On Syria Airstrikes

Usually all of them would be expected to support their leader - and the party position.

But Mr Corbyn's decision to release a letter outlining his opposition to airstrikes against Islamic State in Syria has raised the prospect of a revolt over the issue when it comes to be voted on in the Commons.

:: Corbyn Set For Showdown Over Syria Airstrikes

Ahead of a meeting of the shadow cabinet where a collective position is expected to be agreed, Sky News takes a look at where Labour's frontbench stands on the issue.

Sky News understands that at an extraordinary meeting of the shadow cabinet on Thursday, only four members explicitly supported Mr Corbyn's stance.

These were shadow communities secretary Jon Trickett, John Cryer who is the Parliamentary Labour Party chair, shadow chancellor John McDonnell, and shadow international development secretary Diane Abbott.

It is thought that 15 members of the shadow cabinet spoke out against Mr Corbyn's view.

They included: shadow education secretary Lucy Powell, shadow defence secretary Maria Eagle, deputy leader Tom Watson, shadow Northern Ireland secretary Vernon Coaker, shadow culture secretary Michael Dugher and shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn.

Heidi Alexander, shadow secretary of state for health, is another one of those in favour of bombing IS in Syria.

Chris Bryant, shadow leader of the Commons, also holds the opposite view to Mr Corbyn.

Sky sources have indicated shadow transport secretary Lilian Greenwood is leaning towards supporting airstrikes. 

The source said she found the arguments of Mr Benn at the shadow cabinet meeting "persuasive".

Shadow secretary of state for health Ian Murray has told the BBC he opposes airstrikes. 

Opinion is also likely to be split on whether or not the vote should be whipped, which would mean MPs would be expected to back their leader's position.

Mr McDonnell and Mr Watson want there to be a free vote, allowing MPs to vote with their conscience.

Former shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna told Sky News at the weekend he would defy Mr Corbyn if MPs are ordered to oppose military action.

These Are the Companies With the Best Parental Leave Policies

Getty Images (4)

Earlier this week, Amazon announced that it would expand its leave policy for new moms and extend the policy to dads for the first time. It’s just the latest tech company to do so, as Silicon Valley realizes the best way to attract top talent is to offer flexible work schedules and ever-flashier perks. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, 75% of the workforce will be made up of millennials in just a decade, and employers are kowtowing to their work-life preferences; a recent survey by Ernst & Young found that “millennials around the world are more likely than other generations to cite paid parental leave as an important benefit.”

While tech workers can rejoice, generous paid parental leave is far from routine in the rest of the economy. As you may have heard, the U.S. is one of the only countries in the world, along with Suriname and Papua New Guinea, that does not have mandatory paid parental leave. The Family and Medical Leave Act stipulates that “eligible” workers who have been at a company with 50 or more employees for over a year receive up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave per year.

According to SHRM’s 2015 Employer Benefits Survey, 21% of employers offered some type of paid maternity leave in 2015, while 17% offered paid paternity and/or adoption leave—a notable increase from 2014, when just 12% of employers offered paid maternity, paternity, and adoption leave. But in Silicon Valley, paid parental leaves are becoming the norm rather than the exception. These are the most generous policies:

AdobeNot to be overshadowed by Microsoft or Netflix, Adobe also announced this year that it would expand its paid parental leave to 26 weeks of paid maternity leave and 16 weeks of paid time for primary caregivers (including those who become parents through childbirth, surrogacy, adoption, or foster care).

AmazonThe most recent tech company to jump on the paid parental leave bandwagon, Amazon offers moms four weeks of paid leave before giving birth and 10 weeks after, plus an additional six weeks that any new parent (mom, dad, biological, or otherwise) can take, for a total of up to 20 weeks (during which their stock shares continue to vest). Fathers and adoptive parents get six weeks.

AppleExpectant mothers can take up to four weeks before giving birth and 14 weeks after. Fathers and other non-birth parents can take six-week paid leaves. Not ready for kids yet? Apple’s benefits also include egg-freezing services.

Change.orgThe petition website offers 18 weeks paid maternity, paternity, and adoption leave. “Our goal was to create a real parental leave program that supports all evolving families without creating financial hardship for them,” change.org President and COO Jennifer Dulski told our sister site Fortune in 2014.

FacebookBefore Netflix changed its policy, Facebook was the reigning paid parental leave king. The social network gives employees four months (16 weeks) of paid maternity, paternity, and adoption leave; in fact, it refers to the time off simply as “parental leave.” And according to many, Facebook fosters an environment that encourages everyone to take their leave, rather than stigmatizing it. (Instagram, owned by Facebook, offers the same policy.) Facebook also gives employees $4,000 in “baby cash,” has designated breast-feeding rooms in its Menlo Park headquarters, and like Apple provides egg-freezing services.

Google (and YouTube)Birth moms receive 18 weeks of paid maternity leave (during which their stock shares continue to vest). Moms who experience complications during childbirth receive an additional four weeks. The primary caregiver (gender neutral, includes adoptive parents and surrogates) is given up to 12 weeks paid “baby-bonding leave.” The non-primary caregiver receives up to seven weeks of paid leave. 

Families also receive $500 in “baby bonding bucks,” Google provides on-campus child care and “mother’s rooms,” and if the employee dies, his or her children will receive $1,000 per month until age 19, or 23 if they’re a full-time student, regardless of how long the employee worked at Google.

Microsoft
The company announced earlier this year that all new mothers and fathers (through birth, adoption, or surrogacy) will receive 12 weeks of paid leave, while birth mothers receive an additional eight weeks of maternity disability paid in full, for a total of 20 weeks.

NetflixThe streaming company made headlines just a few months ago when it announced new moms and dads would receive unlimited paid parental leave for the first year following the birth or adoption of a child. While Netflix received lots of (well-deserved) praise for the program, it is for “salaried streaming employees” only, meaning hourly workers (who work in the DVD division) are out of luck. (And of course, it’s only a good policy as long as people actually take advantage of it.)

PinterestNew mothers receive 12 weeks paid leave, dads get four weeks. According to Mother Jones, the social media site also encourages families to take advantage of Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts, which let employees set aside some of their paycheck tax free to help pay for childcare costs.

Reddit

Reddit gets less fanfare than other tech companies (perhaps because it’s not exactly recognized as the most progressive place to work), but it boasts a 17-week paid parental leave policy, according to a spokesperson, regardless of gender or birthing means.

TwitterTwitter offers one of the most generous paid maternity leaves, at 20 weeks. For dads and other non-birth parents, it offers 10 weeks.

YahooMarissa Mayer instituted a new paid leave policy at Yahoo in 2013, which stipulates 16 weeks of paid maternity leave and eight weeks for fathers and non-birth parents. Families also receive $500 to help with baby costs.

Non-tech companies that offer generous paid parental leave include:

• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — 52 weeks of paid maternity and paternity leave
• Bloomberg — 18 weeks full paid leave for primary caregiver, 4 weeks for non-primary caregiver
• Arnold & Porter LLP — 18 weeks paid leave for for the primary caretaker (including for adoption), 6 weeks paid parental leave for the secondary caretaker
• U.S. Navy — 18 weeks of paid maternity leave
• Johnson & Johnson — 15 weeks paid maternity leave (17 weeks if the mother has a C-section), 8 weeks of paid paternity and adoption leave
• Bank of America — 12 weeks of paid maternity, paternity, and adoption leave
• Patagonia — 8 weeks of paid maternity, paternity, and adoption leave
• Goldman Sachs — 16 weeks full-paid maternity leave, 4 weeks paid paternity leave

What The Danish Girl Reminds Us About Transgender People

The new film The Danish Girl comes at a time of increased visibility and acceptance of transgender people. But the story of Lili Elbe, a transgender woman who was one of the first known recipients of a sex-change operation, is also a public reminder that complicated matters of gender and sex are nothing new.

The early years of TIME magazine—which coincided with the last years of Elbe’s life, before she died in 1931 not long after one of her surgeries—are rife with articles about people who were gender-nonconforming in one way or another. In some cases those stories, with their outdated phrasings, only put into perspective how much things have changed. Other articles, however, are written with a lack of judgment that may surprise modern readers.

In one 1929 example, the magazine reported on a British military captain who was revealed to have been a biological woman who had successfully passed as a man for five years, marrying and raising two children whom she had borne prior to “yielding” to “her tendency to transvestism.” Captain Barker’s biological sex became public when he was processed by a prison for men after being unable to pay a court fine. The discovery was a curiosity to a public “whose vocabularies do not even yet contain the noun transvestite, the verb transvestize, the adjective transvestile, the adverb transvestily. 

A 1936 story about a turn-of-the-century medical text about sex explained the situation in words that such a public couldunderstand: “I often reflect sadly that I have no earthly chance of looking altogether like a woman,” one man who liked to dress in women’s clothes told the author. “Yet my eyes and smile are regarded as truly feminine, and happiness [brought on by the clothing] shows itself and soon improves my appearance.”

It’s a fitting reminder of the limits and complications of our vocabulary. The words that might be used today to express one’s identity weren’t always available, and nor were the social frameworks that might make that expression possible.

Miss World Canada Attacked by State-Linked Chinese Paper

A Chinese newspaper attacked Miss World Canada in an editorial Sunday, after the China-born contestant said she was barred for political reasons from entering the country to attend the upcoming international beauty pageant.

The article, in the state-linked English language newspaper Global Times, accused Anastasia Lin of criticizing the Chinese government to “gain sympathy from the Western public that already holds prejudices against China.”

The 25-year-old beauty queen testified in July at a U.S. congressional hearing on religious persecution in China and is a vocal critic of Beijing’s human-rights abuses. She is reportedly a practitioner of Falun Gong, a Buddhist- and Taoist-inspired Chinese spiritual discipline detested by the communist authorities.

“Lin has to pay a cost for being tangled with hostile forces,” the article said. “She may not know that all performers should avoid being involved in radical political issues.”

It added: “Lin needs to learn to be responsible for her words and deeds.”

Speaking last week at a news conference at Hong Kong Airport after learning that she was barred from entering China, Lin said, according to CNN: “Ask the Chinese government why is it afraid to let in a beauty queen? Ask them why, what kind of precedent this would set for future international events that it wants to host. Ask them whether they would also bar Olympic athletes from participating in the Winter Olympic Games just because they have different views that the Communist Party don’t agree with?”

People reported that Chinese officials were harassing Lin’s father, who lives in China, and that he had threatened to cut ties with her if she did not stop criticizing the communist regime.

Pope ends Africa trip with mosque visit

Pope Francis ventured into one of the world's most dangerous neighbourhoods on Monday to beg Christians and Muslims to end a spiral of hate, vendetta and bloodshed that has killed thousands over the past three years.

Under intense security, Francis passed through a no-man's zone to enter PK5, a district where most Muslims who have not fled the capital of the Central African Republic have now sought refuge. 

The neighbourhood has been cut off from the rest of the capital Bangui for the past two months by a ring of so-called anti-balaka Christian militias, who block supplies from entering and Muslims from leaving.

A heavy deployment of United Nations peacekeepers with rifles and bullet-proof vests was present throughout PK5 and armoured vehicles mounted with machineguns were positioned along the route of Pope Francis' motorcade.

U.N. sharpshooters looked out from the tops of the minarets crowning the freshly repainted green and white mosque, where hundreds of PK5's Muslims listened as Francis made an impassioned appeal for an end to the violence.

"Christians and Muslims are brothers and sisters," he said after a speech by Imam Tidiani Moussa Naibi, one of the local religious leaders trying to foster dialogue.

"Those who claim to believe in God must also be men and women of peace," he said, noting that Christians, Muslims and followers of traditional religions had lived together in peace for many years.

He appealed for "an end to every act which, from whatever side, disfigures the face of God and whose ultimate aim is to defend particular interests by any and all means."

Central African Republic descended into chaos in early 2013 when mainly Muslim Seleka rebels seized power in the majority Christian country, sparking reprisals from Christian militias. Leaders from both sides say the hate has been manipulated for political gain.

Healing rifts between Christian and Muslim communities has been a theme throughout Francis' first visit to the continent, which has also taken him to Kenya and Uganda.

However, nowhere is his call for peace and reconciliation more pressing than in Central African Republic, where thousands have died and hundreds of thousands have been displaced in clashes that have split the country along religious lines. 

UNPRECEDENTED SECURITY

"Together, we must say no to hatred, to revenge and to violence, particularly that violence which is perpetrated in the name of a religion or of God himself. God is peace, 'salam,'" the pope said, using the Arabic word for peace. 

Unprecedented security measures have been laid on for the pontiff's two-day visit to the former French colony, which took place amid a surge in violence.

Tit-for-tat killings in and around the tiny PK5 enclave have claimed at least 100 lives since late September, according to Human Rights Watch. 

Imam Naibi has called PK5 "an open-air prison", but on Monday he struck a optimistic tone.

"The relationship between our Christian brothers and sisters and ourselves is so deep that no manoeuvre seeking to undermine it will succeed," he told the pope. 

"The Christians and Muslims of this country are obliged to live together and love each other."

Both the Christian majority and the minority Muslims have welcomed the pope's visit, hoping he can spur renewed dialogue and help restore peace. Thousands of PK5's Muslims lined the road into the enclave to get a glimpse of the pontiff.

Central African Republic's United Nations peacekeeping mission brought in additional forces and has deployed over 3,000 soldiers in an attempt to secure the city during the pope's visit. The government is also contributing around 500 police and gendarmes. French troops based in Bangui are also on alert. 

Pope Francis ends his Africa tour with a Mass for tens of thousands of Catholics at the country's national stadium before returning to Rome.