Killed Navy Seal Was Jailed Banker's Grandson

A US Navy Seal killed by Islamic State militants during a gun battle in Iraq is the grandson of a notorious financier.

Charlie Keating IV died after IS attackers overran the Kurdish Peshmerga frontline near Mosul on Tuesday morning.

The 31-year-old's grandfather, Charles Keating, served prison time for his role in a huge savings and loan scandal in the 1980s.

The Islamic State used suicide car bombs and bulldozers to break through the Peshmerga frontline on Tuesday.

They advanced on the base where the Pentagon says Keating and other Navy Seals have been advising and assisting the Kurdish forces.

The US responded with F-15s and drones that dropped more than 20 bombs, said a US official.

Keating was a Navy Seal based in San Diego, California.

The elite serviceman was a former Phoenix, Arizona, star distance runner who went on to join the athletics team at Indiana University.

He is the third American serviceman to die in combat in Iraq since the US-led coalition launched its campaign against the Islamic State group in the summer of 2014, according to military officials.

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey ordered all state flags be lowered to half-mast on Wednesday in honour of the serviceman.

Keating had been planning to get married in November, according to his former track coach.

Rob Reniewicki said he is heartbroken by the death of his former protege.

"He was a tremendous athlete, a tremendous person," Mr Reniewicki told Phoenix TV station KTVK.

"I'm devastated. I'm crushed. I'm trying to hold myself together."

Arizona US Senator John McCain also paid tribute to Keating in a statement.

"Like so many brave Americans who came before him, Charlie sacrificed his life in honorable service to our nation for a cause greater than self-interest, which we can never truly repay," Mr McCain said in a statement.

He was among five senators who were accused of impropriety in the 1980s after they took campaign donations from Keating’s grandfather while appealing to regulators on his behalf.

Mr McCain was later cleared of wrongdoing. Keating died in 2014, aged 90.

Thousands of depositors were fleeced in the $150bn savings-and-loan crisis.

Wonga Losses Soar As Payday Price Cap Bites

Britain's biggest payday lender saw losses double last year as a price cap imposed by the City regulator triggered a sharp fall in revenues.

Wonga Group recorded a pre-tax loss of £80.2m in 2015, compared to £38.1m a year earlier, raising questions about the ability of one of the UK's most controversial financial services brands to reinvent itself in an era of tighter regulation.

The results also showed a 64% decline in Wonga's revenues to £77.3m from £217.2m in 2014, confirming a Sky News report.

The figures take Wonga's losses for the last two years to in excess of £100m, underlining the battle facing its management team and shareholders to turn around its financial performance.

The company, which is led by Andy Haste, a former boss of RSA, the insurance company, wants to diversify its business away from the short-term lending model that made it a lightning rod for political and public anger over the sector's rapid growth.

Mr Haste said: "We have made real progress towards creating a sustainable business with an accepted place on financial services."

Finance director Paul Miles said the slump in revenues was driven by a "significant but expected reduction in lending volumes globally".

He said: "In the UK, the reduction reflects a full year's impact of the stricter lending criteria we implemented in late 2014 and the price cap introduced by the UK regulator in early 2015."

Wonga's slump into the red for 2014 followed a string of regulatory settlements, customer redress and restructuring costs triggered by the loss of more than 300 jobs.

Last year, it was ordered by the City watchdog to pay more than £2.5m in compensation to 45,000 customers who were sent letters purporting to be from law firms but which in fact did not exist.

Play Mobile Game To Help Dementia Research

Members of the public are being invited to join the battle against dementia by downloading and playing a video game on their mobile devices.

Every person who plays Sea Hero Questwill be doing their bit to help scientists understand how the typical human brain navigates.

Early signs of dementia can include the loss of spatial awareness and a difficulty with navigation in familiar places.

By using the video game to gather information from tens of thousands of healthy brains, researchers at University College London will try to establish what is a 'normal' pattern of behaviour.

UCL neuroscientist Dr Hugo Spiers says the game "simulates navigation". 

"It's a game in which you have to find different sea monsters and while you're trying to find these sea monsters, the game tracks where you are in the world and which direction you are facing.

"That information about where you are gets relayed back to our science team where we crunch through that data to try and benchmark how everybody playing the game is navigating.

"We're hoping to learn from the data how well people do at different ages, across men and women, and different places in the world and that will give us this really wonderful database.

"This is something nobody has ever done before and I'm very proud that we're doing this in the UK.

"For me, this is going to be a revolution to how we do this type of work.

"It's citizen science. Every one of my friends - every one of your friends, I hope - will contribute to helping us fight dementia."

Developers of the game claim that if 100,000 people play it for two minutes, it will generate the same amount of data as 50 years of similar, laboratory-based research.

The game is split up into five different themed areas and the central character is a sea explorer who sets out on a journey through labyrinthine environments to recover and record the memories of his ageing father.

Hilary Evans, chief executive of Alzheimer’s Research UK, told Sky News: "We know people spend hours and hours on their mobile phones, so the challenge was: how can we convert some of those hours - or even some of those minutes - to actually help answer one of the biggest medical conditions we face?

"There's no treatment for dementia and we are a long way from finding a cure.

"To get there we need research and we need data that doesn't yet exist. This game will give us that data."

This is not the first time that scientists have asked members of the public for help by playing computer games.

Last year, Cancer Research UK released a puzzle app which involved spotting patterns within cell samples, saving researchers hundreds of hours but there has never been a dementia study on this scale.

The free game - available from the App Store and Google Play - was designed by scientists from University College London, University of East Anglia, Alzheimer's Research UK and game creators Glitchers.

They say gamers can be certain that all of the information generated through the game will be anonymised and stored securely.

Former Strictly Come Dancing judge Arlene Phillips - whose father suffered with Alzheimer’s for more than 10 years - attended last night's launch of Sea Hero Quest at UCL.

She told Sky News: "Only research can help and change the way we look at dementia and also help to halt it or at least slow it down.

"Some people have super-advanced brains and some people's (brains) work much slower but dementia can affect any brain.

"How does that happen and why does that happen?

"We'll start to understand at what point the brain starts to lose its facility to have spatial awareness and, with that, the understanding of what made that change."

Airport Expansion: Govt Must 'Make Up Its Mind'

Ministers have been urged to "end years of dithering" and set out a clear timetable for airport expansion.

Last July, the Airports Commission had recommended a third runway be built at Heathrow.

In December the Department for Transport confirmed that the shortlisted options - new runways at Heathrow or Gatwick or the extension of an existing runway at Heathrow - were "viable".

At the time, it was decided that more work needed to be done on noise, pollution and compensation before a decision was made on which project to support. This is expected to be concluded during the summer.

But Louise Ellman, chairman of The Commons' Transport Select Committee, has criticised the Government for confirming "what was already known".

Labour MP Ms Ellman said that, with dozens of new runways being planned at airports around the world, the UK's standing in global aviation was under threat if the Government continued to procrastinate.

She said: "The months ticking by constitute time wasted for the UK's economic prosperity.

"UK PLC needs to know that a decision will be taken. Doing nothing means the UK continues to lose out."

"The Government must make up its mind.

"The decision on location is not the end of the process - it is the start of one.

"Real progress cannot begin until the location is declared.

"Work on environmental issues can run in parallel with other pre-construction work."

Her words echo those of Willie Walsh, chief executive of International Airlines Group, which is the parent firm of British Airways.

Mr Walsh said in December that he would focus expansion away from Heathrow if the Government continued to "dither" over a third runway.

Meanwhile, the Department for Transport said: "The case for aviation is clear but it's vitally important we get the decision right so that it will benefit generations to come.

"As well as progressing the package of further work announced in December, the Government will continue to consider (the Airports Commission's) evidence before reaching a view on its preferred scheme."

Beyoncé Fans In Raleigh Can Relax: She’s Coming Back On Stage

As Beyoncé fans will tell you, she can do pretty much anything. One thing she cannot do, however, is control the weather (yet).

The superstar’s concert in Raleigh, N.C. on Tuesday night — part of her ongoing “Formation World Tour” — was suspended by officials due to lighting storms just after 10 p.m., local news channel WNCN reports.

The concert venue, the Carter-Finley Stadium at North Carolina State University, has been evacuated, with the fans being sheltered inside the neighboring PNC Arena. Hundreds more are reportedly still stuck in traffic en route to the stadium amid the downpour.

The Beyhive needn’t fret, however, as a subsequent announcement from organizers said their Queen is scheduled to be back on stage by 11.20 p.m.

Read Ted Cruz’s Speech on Dropping Out of the Presidential Race

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz dropped out of the presidential race after losing the crucial Indiana primary.

Here is a transcript of the speeches he and running mate Carly Fiorina gave at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Indianapolis Tuesday night.

FIORINA: I know that I speak for the entire Cruz family, the entire Cruz team when I tell you how many Hoosiers we have fallen in love with on this campaign.
(APPLAUSE)
All the wonderful people who have shown up at rallies across the state, the retail stops where people let what looked like awesome food get cold while we all stood and talked about the state you love and the state we have come to love and the nation we all love.
(APPLAUSE)
We came together as fellow warriors — warriors in a cause to save the soul of our party, the character and the future of our nation. And that cause continues and you are warriors still.
(APPLAUSE)
You know — you know what makes this country extraordinary. You know that we are extraordinary because while people are gifted by god all over the world it is only in this nation that so many people have been given the opportunity to realize their god given gifts. And we’ve been given that opportunity because we were founded on two powerful ideas. One, that each of us have a right to find and use our god given gifts, a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
(APPLAUSE)
That those rights come from god and should not be taken away by man or government.
(APPLAUSE)
And the other idea that power concentrated is power abused. And so when power gets concentrated in the hands of too few for too long, too many Americans and this nation suffer. And you know as I know that in this nation extraordinary people step up. You have all stepped up and it has been my great pleasure, my privilege, my honor to stand by and fight alongside one of the great citizens of this extraordinary nation.
(APPLAUSE)
The Ted Cruz that I have come to know, the same man that you have come to know. This is a man who favors substance over sloganeering.
(APPLAUSE)
Who favors respect over insult.
(APPLAUSE)
Who favors positive policy solutions that will actually work over hand waving. (APPLAUSE)
It has been my great privilege and honor to come to know him as a friend, as a husband, as a father. He is indeed a great citizen of this great nation and so citizens — fellow citizens, as we fight on for the nation we hold dear …
(APPLAUSE)
As we know that our history is long and our future is longer still please join me in welcoming a great man, Ted Cruz; his wonderful and brilliant and great wife, Heidi Cruz and the two girls that I have come to love as much as you have, Caroline (ph) and Kathyrn (ph). A great American family.
(APPLAUSE)
CRUZ: God bless the Hoosier state.
(APPLAUSE)
Let me tell you about the America that I love. Our nation is an exceptional nation. We were founded by risk takers and pioneers, brave men and women who put everything on the line for freedom. We began with a revolutionary idea that our rights don’t come from kings or queens or even presidents but from god almighty.
(APPLAUSE)
That every one of us has an unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
(APPLAUSE)
And that to protect those rights the constitution serves as change to bind the mischief of government.
(APPLAUSE)
For more than two centuries, we have protected those rights. We believe in equal rights for everybody — that everybody deserves dignity and respect whether they agree with you or not. That there will always be evil in the world and injustice in the world but America stands up to it and confronts it.
(APPLAUSE)
Even from a Montgomery jail our voice for justice and equality rings out for the ages. America is hopeful, optimistic. America is kind. We are not boastful or mean spirited. America is brave. We keep our word and we believe in peace through strength.
(APPLAUSE)
We have spilled more blood, spent more treasure in defence of liberty than any country in history yet we do not engage in wars of conquest. We do not seek to enrich ourselves at our neighbors’ expense. America is the land that gave my mom, an Irish Italian girl growing up in a working class family the chance to be the first in her family ever to go to college, to become a pioneering computer programmer in the 1950s.
(APPLAUSE)
I love you, mom. America is the land that welcomed my father as a penny immigrant. He’d seen oppression, prison and torture in Cuba and for him America was hope. It was opportunity. In 1957, if someone had told that teenager washing dishes for $0.50 an hour that one day his son would be elected to the Senate and he would get a chance to cast his ballot for his son to be president of the United States …
(APPLAUSE)
That teenage immigrant washing dishes could never have believed it and yet that’s exactly what happened. Only in America.
(APPLAUSE)
In recent months, a lot of people have been talking about what happened 40 years ago at the Republican convention in Kansas City — our party’s last contested convention. When I look back at that convention in Missouri, I think of the speech that Ronald Reagan gave to our party. He spoke not of the next four years. He saw not the close horizons that of interest to those who seek to build their own fortunes in the short term but instead he looked to the distance times and — that concerned the men and women who’s purpose it is to secure the blessings of liberty to their posteriority.
Ronald Reagan spoke of the next 100 years and of the generations of Americans who would come to know whether our nation had escaped the existential threat of nuclear war, who would know whether our party had succeeded in its fight against the erosion of constitutional freedoms that only grow and multiple under rule of the Democratic party. Ronald Reagan spoke of the purpose that defined our party then and that must unite and drive our party now.
(APPLAUSE)
The Republican Party of Ronald Reagan and of George Herbert Walker Bush ensured that thousands of nuclear missiles that the Soviet Union and the United States had targeted each other were never fired and that Soviet communism was consigned to the ash heap of history.
(APPLAUSE)
They fought hard so that our American freedoms were not lost to any foreign foe nor sacrificed in pursuit of any domestic agenda of the Democratic party.
(APPLAUSE)
Yet the challenges we face today remain as great as ever. Americans are deeply frustrated and desperately want to change the path that we’re on. We have economic stagnation at home and our constitutional rights are under assault. Under the Obama-Clinton foreign policy, Russia has emerged as a resurgent threat.
China looks with a covetous eye on the lands of our allies in the region. A nuclear North Korea and a near nuclear Iran yearn to devastate our homeland and radical Islamic terrorism unleashes an evil that threatens the world. This year, two weeks before our party gathers in Cleveland all Americans will celebrate the 240th birthday of the United States of America.
(APPLAUSE)
American parents and grandparents will watch the fireworks with their kids and will dream of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren to come and wonder how those future generations of Americans will remember what we do not only this summer but in the coming decades. Will we rise to meet the challenges that face our nation on the international stage or will we withdraw and cower timidly from the world?
(APPLAUSE)
Will we secure freedom of thought, expression and religion for future generations?
(APPLAUSE)
Or will we succumb to the tyranny of a political correctness and the temptation of radical politics and balkanization here at home?
(APPLAUSE)
Will we hold fast to our founding values of rewarding talent, hard work and industry or will we continue on that path of creeping socialism that incentivizes apathy and dependency?
(APPLAUSE)
Will we deliver control of health care to citizens and their doctors or will we continue down the Obamacare road to second rate socialized medicine?
(APPLAUSE)
Will we keep America safe from the threats of nuclear war and atomic terrorism?
(APPLAUSE)
Or will we pass onto future generations a land devastated and destroyed by the enemies of civilization?
(APPLAUSE)
This is the responsibility with which we have been charged by history. This is our challenge. This is the fight that falls to our generation. When we launched this campaign 13 months ago we saw a movement grow. The pundits all said it was hopeless but we saw over 300,000 volunteers all across this nation.
(APPLAUSE)
Over 1.5 million contributions averaging about $60 each.
(APPLAUSE)
Many of those volunteers, many of those contributions you never forget. Just a few days ago two young kids ages four and six handed me two envelopes full of change. All of their earnings from their lemonade stand. They wanted the campaign to have it. That’s what built this campaign. That’s what fuels this movement.
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you to each of you. Incredible patriots who have fought so hard to save our nation.
(APPLAUSE)
And I’m with you. I am so grateful to you, to my amazing wife, Heidi.
(APPLAUSE)
To our precious girls, Caroline (ph) and Kathryn (ph).
(APPLAUSE)
To my mom, the prayer warrior.
(APPLAUSE)
To my dad who has traveled this nation preaching the gospel.
(APPLAUSE)
To Carly Fiorina who has been an incredible, phenomenal running mate.
(APPLAUSE)
What you have done — the movement that you have started is extraordinary. I love each and every one of you.
(APPLAUSE)
From the beginning I’ve said that I would continue on as long as there was a viable path to victory. Tonight, I’m sorry to say it appears that path has been foreclosed. Together, we left it all on the field in Indiana. We gave it everything we’ve got but the voters chose another path. And so with a heavy heart but with boundless optimism for the long term future of our nation, we are suspending our campaign. But hear me now I am not suspending our fight for liberty.
(APPLAUSE)
I am not suspending our fight to defend the constitution, to defend the Judeo-Christian values that built America.
(APPLAUSE)
Our movement will continue and I give you my word that I will continue this fight with all of my strength and all of my ability.
(APPLAUSE)
You are extraordinary and we will continue to fight next week and next month and next year and together we will continue as long as god grants us the strength to fight on.
(APPLAUSE)
For one thing remains as true today as it was 40 years ago in Kansas City. In this fight for the long term future of America there is no substitute for victory. There is no substitute for the America that each and every one of us loves with all of our heart, that we believe in with all of our heart and that together we will restore as a shining city on the hill for every generation to come. Thank you to each of you and god bless you.
(APPLAUSE)

Brazil's WhatsApp ban affects 100 million users

A Brazilian judge has ordered mobile-phone carriers to block access to WhatsApp for 72 hours throughout the country, the second such move against the messaging application in five months.

Monday's decision affects WhatsApp's 100 million-plus users in the country. The reason for the order is not known due to legal secrecy in an ongoing case in the court.

It is the second time since mid-December that WhatsApp has been the target of a blocking order.

The service was shut down for 48 hours on December 15 last year after Facebook failed to comply with an order, although another court interrupted that suspension shortly afterward.

He was jailed and subsequently freed.

Twitter user Acaua Tavares reacted with the Portuguese acronym "PQP", roughly equivalent to "WTF?" in English, an agency reported.

"WhatsApp blocked again, PQP! That's Brazil," he wrote.

Many commenters reacted with a single question: "Again?"

Officials blamed the company of continuously failing to share information on WhatsApp users for an investigation into drug trafficking and organised crime.

Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook chief executive, was "stunned" by the "extreme decision".

In a statement, WhatsApp said the company is "disappointed at the decision" after doing the utmost to cooperate with Brazilian tribunals.

In 2013, Google too found itself under fire. The search engine giant's top Brazil executive was accused of breaking election laws when he refused to remove YouTube videos that were critical of a mayoral candidate in Mato Grosso do Sul state.

Reported non-cooperation from media companies is not that uncommon.